why Antarctica and the North Pole are made of fresh water when its surrounded by the ocean?
In: Earth Science
The north pole is not freshwater. It is 4,000 meters (13,123 feet) deep saltwater ocean on the north pole.
There is most of the time sea ice on the surface of the north pole. When the water freezes the salt tends to be squeezed out from the ice. The result is that the sea ice has lower salt levels and it is so human can drink it.
The process is called freeze desalination and is a way to remove salt from seawater. I suspect you could do it in your own freezer at home but is not sure.
Antarctica is freshwater because it is land and the ice is made from water falling from the sky. Water that evaporates from the sea leaves salt behind and a very large part of rain and snow falling everywhere on earth is from evaporated seawater. So Antarctica is fresh water for the same reason snow and ice is freshwater everywhere on earth.
When water freezes or evaporates it does so as pure water and leaves dissolved impurities behind. So all of the snow that falls onto it is pure water, and so is any sea water which freezes around it.
Because the ice caps come from snow / rain, which is not salty! They fall on top of land / existing ice, and then compact due to more falling on top. This forms glaciers (rivers of ice) which are fresh water, and then these are what break off to make ice bergs, which are thus also fresh water and not salty.
I do want to point out that Antarctica is an actual continent, under all that ice and snow there is solid ground. All that ice there is from snow/rain, more from snow since it is a desert.
The crystal structure of ice does not really allow any salt to be in the ice. So beneath the ice caps there are brine pools, but the ice caps themselves are fresh water.
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