4.2: Origin of the Oceans
So how did the oceans form in the first place? The early Earth was formed through the accretion of various materials, and that a period of melting and intense volcanic activity followed. The materials that accreted on the early Earth contained the components that would eventually become our oceans and atmosphere. Under the high pressures found in the Earth’s interior, gases remain dissolved in magma. As these magmas rise to the surface through volcanic activity, the pressure is reduced and the gases are released through a process called outgassing . Volcanic activity releases many different gases, including water vapor, carbon dioxide (CO 2 ), sulfur dioxide (SO 2 ), carbon monoxide (CO), hydrogen sulfide (H 2 S), hydrogen gas, nitrogen, and methane (CH 4 ). Lighter gases such as hydrogen and helium dissipated into space, but the heavier gases remained and formed Earth’s early atmosphere.
The rise of atmospheric oxygen
As the early Earth cooled, the water vapor in the atmosphere condensed and fell as rain. By about 4 billion years ago, the first permanent accumulations of water were present on Earth, forming the oceans and other bodies of water. Water moves between these different reservoirs through the hydrological cycle . Water is evaporated from the oceans, lakes, streams, the surface of the land, and plants (transpiration) by solar energy (Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\)). It is moved through the atmosphere by winds and condenses to form clouds of water droplets or ice crystals. It comes back down as rain or snow and then flows through streams and rivers, into lakes, and eventually back to the oceans. Water on the surface and in streams and lakes infiltrates the ground to become groundwater. Groundwater slowly moves through the rock and surface materials; some returns to other streams and lakes, and some goes directly back to the oceans.
Water is stored in various reservoirs as it moves through this cycle. The largest, by far, is the oceans, accounting for 97% of the volume (Figure \(\PageIndex{2}\)). Of course, that water is salty. The remaining 3% is fresh water. Two-thirds of our fresh water is stored in the ground and one-third is stored in ice. The remaining fresh water — about 0.03% of the total — is stored in lakes, streams, vegetation, and the atmosphere.
To put that in perspective, let’s think about putting all of Earth’s water into a 1 L jug. We start by almost filling the jug with 970 ml of water and 34 g of salt. Then we add one regular-sized (~20 mL) ice cube (representing glacial ice) and two teaspoons (~10 mL) of groundwater. All of the water that we see around us in lakes and streams and up in the sky can be represented by adding three more drops from an eyedropper.
Although the proportion of Earth’s water that is in the atmosphere is tiny, the actual volume is huge. At any given time, there is the equivalent of approximately 13,000 km 3 of water in the air in the form of water vapor and water droplets in clouds. Water is evaporated from the oceans, vegetation, and lakes at a rate of 1,580 km 3 per day, and just about exactly the same volume falls as rain and snow every day, over both the oceans and land. The precipitation that falls on land goes back to the ocean in the form of stream flow (117 km 3 /day) and groundwater flow (6 km 3 /day).
How did the oceans get salty?
Outgassing was responsible for ocean formation, but how did the ocean water get salty? Most of the salts and dissolved elements in the ocean were probably outgassed along with the water vapor, so the ocean has probably always been about as salty as it is now. But we know that rainfall and other processes weather rocks on the Earth’s surface, and runoff carries dissolved substances into the ocean, contributing to its salinity. Yet despite this constant input, the ocean’s salt composition remains essentially the same. Therefore, the rate of input of new material must be balanced by the rate of removal; in other words, the oceans are in a steady state in regards to salinity.
*”Physical Geology” by Steven Earle used under a CC-BY 4.0 international license. Download this book for free at http://open.bccampus.ca