For tenner , it ’s been “ snowing ” salinity in the deepest parts of the Dead Sea , a phenomenon that has stumped researcher read one of the world ’s saltiest bodies of water system . research worker with the American Geophysics Union now conceive they know how this cognitive operation takes place , lend a bass savvy to how salt builds up in the Earth ’s crust .
Since the 1970s , freshwater diversion from waterways feed into the Dead Sea – a salt lake bordering Jordan and Israel – has lower the H2O level of the Dead Sea , which in turns makes the water saltier . For years , researchers have honor salt stratum that form along the top bed of the water that snow down to pile up along the lakebed at a rate of about 10 centimeters ( 4 inch ) every year in upright finger - comparable social organisation . It defies physics , or at least geologists think it did .
“ The initial finger might only be a few mm or a span of centimeters dense , but they ’re everywhere across the entire surface of the lake , ” said study co - source Eckart Meiburg said in astatement .
During the summertime months , heating plant warm up the aerofoil of the lake and divides it into two layer : a tender top level and a colder , less salty layer of water below . The top layer becomes saltier as the heating evaporates piss from it . A previouslyproposed theorysuggested that as the top bed is disturbed by Wave and other motions , tiny parcels of fond body of water can move down into the colder , denser body of water . heat energy diffuses quicker than salt and as the lovesome piss cools salt precipitate out to constitute sinking crystals , or “ snow ” in a process the squad calls fingering .
“ Initially you mould these tiny fingers that are too modest to keep an eye on … but rapidly they interact with each other as they move down , and spring large and large structures , ” said lead author and mechanical engineer Raphael Ouillon .
Until now that was just a hypothesis . Publishing their work inWater Resources Research , investigator rise a computer computer simulation that show how this operation might come . It confirms their saltiness “ finger’s breadth ” theory . The Dead Sea is the only hypersaline organic structure of body of water on Earth that researchers have recorded this process , making it a unequalled instinctive laboratory .
Underwater drone footage bring out the common salt flakes flow like snow .
“ all told this makes the Dead Sea a unequaled system , ” say geologist and study co - writer Nadav Lensky . “ Basically , we have here a new finding that we think is very relevant to the discernment of the arrangement of these washbowl that were so vulgar in Earth ’s chronicle . ”
The findings help researchers interpret the physic of the Dead Sea , as well as how salt deposit found within the Earth ’s insolence may prepare and build , such as the boneheaded salinity stratum work beneath the Mediterranean Sea .
