- Key People:
- V. Walfrid Ekman
- Richard H. Fleming
- Related Topics:
- sea ice
- saltwater intrusion
- water mass
- thermocline
- halocline
The oceans probably achieved their modern characteristics 2 to 1.5 billion years ago. The chemical and mineralogical compositions and the relative proportions of sedimentary rocks of this age differ little from their Paleozoic-era counterparts (those dating from about 541.0 to 251.9 million years ago). The fact that the acid sulfur gases had been neutralized to sulfate by this time is borne out by calcium sulfate deposits of late Precambrian age (roughly 541.0 million to 1.6 billion years old). Chemically precipitated ferric oxides in late Precambrian sedimentary rocks indicate available free oxygen, whatever its percentage. The chemistry and mineralogy of middle and late Precambrian shales is similar to that of Paleozoic shales. Thus, it appears that continuous cycling of sediments like those of the present time has occurred for 1.5 to 2 billion years and that these sediments have controlled oceanic composition.
It was once thought that the saltiness of the modern oceans simply represents the storage of salts derived from rock weathering and transported to the oceans by fluvial processes. With increasing knowledge of the age of Earth, however, it was realized that, at the present-day rate of delivery of salts to the oceans or even at much reduced rates, the total salt content and the mass of individual salts in the oceans could be attained in geologically short time intervals compared with Earth’s age. The total mass of salt in the oceans can be accounted for at present-day rates of stream delivery in about 12 million years. The mass of dissolved silica in ocean water can be doubled in only 20,000 years by addition of stream-derived silica; to double sodium would take 70 million years. It then became apparent that the oceans were not simply an accumulator of salts, but, as water evaporated from the oceans, the introduced salts must be removed in the form of minerals. Thus, the concept of the oceans as a chemical system changed from that of a simple accumulator to that of a steady-state system in which rates of inflow of materials into the oceans equal rates of outflow. The steady-state concept permits influx to vary with time, but it would be matched by nearly simultaneous and equal variation of efflux. Calculations of rates of addition of elements to the oceanic system and removal from it show that for at least 100 million years the oceanic system has been in a steady state with approximately fixed rates of major element inflow and outflow and, thus, fixed chemical composition.
Fred T. Mackenzie The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica