Coldest seawater
Last updated: March 28, 2020 at 4:13 am
Seawater with an average salinity of 35 ppt (parts per thousand) freezes at -1.94°C (28.5°F). The coldest seawater ever recorded at −2.6 °C (27.3 °F) was found in a stream under an Antarctic glacier.
“Sea ice covers about 7% of the Earth’s surface and about 12% of the world’s oceans. Much of the world’s sea ice is enclosed within the polar ice packs in the Earth’s polar regions: the Arctic ice pack of the Arctic Ocean and the Antarctic ice pack of the Southern Ocean.”¹
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EDITOR’S NOTE
The record for the coldest salt water, which is not from a marine environment, is listed separately.
Sylte, Gudrun Urd (24 May 2010). Den aller kaldaste havstraumen. forskning.no
¹ Sea ice. (2018, January 4). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 17:29, January 5, 2018, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_ice
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Jeffrey Gallant is the Editor-in-Chief and Records Keeper of the Diving Almanac. He is also a contributing editor of DIVER Magazine, and the scientific director of the Greenland Shark and Elasmobranch Education and Research Group (GEERG). Jeffrey started diving in 1982.
