Percentage of water in the oceans?

Factual Questions
1

Excluding all organisms, what percentage of ocean water is actually H[sub]2[/sub]O as opposed to salts and other minerals/elements? ‘Oceans’ in the title is plural so as to get an average of the percentage of water in all of the oceans.

2

About 96.5%.

3

hijack/I thought this thread would was going to ask what percentage of the planets water was in the oceans minus fresh water, atmospheric vapor and ice. Anybody wanna take a crack at that?/hijack

4

% by what? By weight, by volume, by mole…

I’m not saying I know any of them, but it could make a difference.

5

[QUOTE=Q.E.D.]
About 96.5%.
[/QUOTE]

I was going to ask for a cite since I’m finding sites that say water in the oceans makes up 96.5% of the water on the planet, but I’m not finding anything that says ‘1 litre of seawater contains 965 ml H[sub]2[/sub]O, x ml dissolved solids, and y ml other liquids’.

But then I found this

6

[QUOTE=outlierrn]
hijack/I thought this thread would was going to ask what percentage of the planets water was in the oceans minus fresh water, atmospheric vapor and ice. Anybody wanna take a crack at that?/hijack
[/QUOTE]
Not quite the answer, but check this out.

7

[QUOTE=outlierrn]
hijack/I thought this thread would was going to ask what percentage of the planets water was in the oceans minus fresh water, atmospheric vapor and ice. Anybody wanna take a crack at that?/hijack
[/QUOTE]

Dammit—I saw the answer to that question just a couple of weeks ago on Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader, but now I can’t remember what the right answer was. I remember that I guessed it right, though. I think it was in the 5 – 10 percent range for total volume of fresh water.

8

Source: http://www.wateraid.org/international/what_we_do/statistics/default.asp

If you are looking for actual water stats, try here —> World Water

9

[QUOTE=Duckster]
97.5% of the earth’s water is saltwater. If the world’s water fitted into a bucket, only one teaspoonful would be drinkable.
[/QUOTE]
So a bucket only contains 40 teaspoons of water? Seems like a small bucket.

10

[QUOTE=hammos1]
So a bucket only contains 40 teaspoons of water? Seems like a small bucket.
[/QUOTE]

I would imagine a part of that remaining 2.5% includes brackish water, which reduces the amount of drinkable water to some value < 2.5%. I’m very possibly wrong since I haven’t the time to delve too far into the links given to find the answer.

11

Just a note of clarification: I wasn’t asking about the percentage of fresh water on the planet vs. the amount of sea water. I was curious about the percentage of water in sea water, which seems to have been answered.