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Chlorophilia t1_is30czg wrote

Reply to comment by bagonmaster in Does the salinity of ocean water increase as depth increases? by rhinotomus

> A storm can change the pressure and temperature of the water above it.

The difference between the highest and lowest atmospheric pressure ever recorded on earth is about 25kPa. That is over 1000 times smaller than the pressure at the bottom of the average ocean depth. Even a large wave would have a larger effect on pressure than that (but still negligibly small compared the pressure at a depth of >>1km).

> I don’t see how you could say with any certainty there’s no ice down there.

Because as I've already stated, it is physically impossible to naturally form ice at depth in the ocean. There is no way to cool the water below the freezing point below the surface. Pressures >> 0.1GPa do not exist in the ocean. There is no known source of freshwater in the deep ocean, nor is there any proposed mechanism for how such a source could exist, nor is there any evidence suggesting this exists.

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regular_modern_girl t1_is3sxqp wrote

Just to be charitable to the user who’s arguing with you, I suppose it’s maybe possible they’ve seen pictures of methane clathrate deposits on the seafloor, which does look a lot like ice and is sometimes even (erroneously) referred to as “methane ice”. I could see how someone might see photos of a methane cold seep in NatGeo or something, see people on boats topside holding samples of what looks like ice, and possibly getting confused over the text referring to it as an ice-like substance at the bottom of the ocean.

However, methane clathrate is obviously not actually ice (or at least it’s not usually classed as one of the forms of water ice and is really kind of its own thing chemically), and I might be assuming too much good faith here . In any event, this other user needs to admit that they’re probably not going to win an argument about basic physical properties of seawater with an actual expert on the physical properties of oceans.

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