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

Oceans cover about 70% of the Earth. If you’re trying to contain that level of sea rise by pumping it into salt plains, you’d be making an entirely new, massive inland sea.

For the sake of argument, let’s say you wanted to flood the Sonoran Desert in the southwestern US. The desert covers about 260,000 square kilometers, whereas the oceans cover about 360,000,000 square kilometers. For every inch you want to drop the ocean, you’d be flooding the desert to about 1,384 inches, or 115 feet. Whether you can physically pump the water is not the question; we don’t have the space to physically store the water, even if it were possible.