if pumping water would not be the issue, is there an obvious reason not to pump a lot of ocean water to salt plains (that used to be lakes/seas) or other zero/low risk areas to lower sea levels?

Question

if pumping water would not be the issue, is there an obvious reason not to pump a lot of ocean water to salt plains (that used to be lakes/seas) or other zero/low risk areas to lower sea levels?

In: Earth Science

Answer 1

It would never work. You could never store all that water anywhere. And if you did put it in salt plains, the water would eventually find its way back to the ocean.

The ocean is approx 2/3 of the planet. That means for each inch we want to lower the ocean, EVERY country on the planet has to store 2 inches of water on each inch of land. Which of course we wouldn’t do, so if we were to try to put it in tanks or storage areas, it will just get higher and higher.

To give you an idea. If the city you live in has a area of 1 square mile. You would need to cover the equivalent of that 1 square mile with 2 inches of water. But obviously you don’t want that water everywhere, so you build a tank. That tank would need to store 34,757,485 gallons of water.

Now, imagine having to do that for the whole country. Every mile, 35 million gallons of water stored.

It’s just not possible.