Will the salt content in the oceans change with any significance if the ice melts? such as plant/animal life?

Question

Will the salt content in the oceans change with any significance if the ice melts? such as plant/animal life?

Answer 1

Who knows for sure? Look at all the thoughts so far.

Answer 2

The ice held in the glaciers is fresh water so if they melt it means the oceans will be greatly diluted. This will effect currents due to the importance of salt in their circulation and will have impacts on salt water species.

Answer 3

The increasing ocean acidification due to the rising atmospheric CO2 is probably the larger concern.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v43...

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/ab...

Answer 4

This process has been occurring beyond the Pleistocene Epoch.Don't stay up worry about it.Glaciers also contribute to mineral deposits in the ocean.They do this as they move.Carrying silt,rocks,and boulders.Most salt is washed into the ocean by natural processes such as runoff...etc

Answer 5

The total increase in sea level if all the ice melted is on order of 500 feet or so (I forget the exact number, but that's a pretty good estimate).  The average depth of the ocean is 12,000 feet.  That means a 4% dilution of salinity, or a decrease of 1.5 o/oo.  The range of salinity is 31 to 38, with and average of 35, or thereabouts.  So over long time scales, several thousand years, ice melt won't affect things very much.  

In the short term, that much freshwater will kill the thermohaline circulation.

Answer 6

if the ice melts it will dilute the water and will make it easier to freeze that hapend 2 million years ago and it froze half the earth and if the ice keeps melting it will hapen again

Answer 7

Well, naturally, if you add more water to a saltwater solution, the solution will become more dilluted.  Just try it.  Fill a cup with some salt water and tast a little drop of it.  Then add about a quarter cup of water.  Taste it again.  Less salty, right?  And that will cause changes that could hurt ocean life.  Not to mention the PH change caused by rising CO2 levels.

Answer 8

Other answers stated the eventual outcome: the _total_ amount of salt water in all oceans is far greater than the amount of fresh water added even by the melting of the Antarctic ice sheet, but those answers did not mention that equilibrium is not reached quickly. During the thousands of years that mixing takes, the less-dense fresh water (even though colder) would stay atop the salt water, disrupting ocean currents. That is likely to have a _vast_ effect on all living things.

A researched, though fictional, account is in Kim Stanley Robinson's recent series on global warming.