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.
About 96.5%.
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
% by what? By weight, by volume, by mole…
I’m not saying I know any of them, but it could make a difference.
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
Not quite the answer, but check this out.
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.
Source: Why we're here | WaterAid
If you are looking for actual water stats, try here —> Water Data – World Water
So a bucket only contains 40 teaspoons of water? Seems like a small bucket.
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.
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.