Salinity

General Information

Salinity

Layer Info
Category	Management
Sub-category	Environmental conditions

Description

On average, seawater in the world's oceans has a salinity of about 3.5% (35 g/l, 35 ppt, 600 mM). This means that every kilogram (roughly one liter by volume) of seawater has approximately 35 grams (1.2 oz) of dissolved salts (predominantly sodium (Na+) and chloride (Cl−) ions) (wikipedia, 2022).

Salinity influences the water's freezing point which decreases as salt concentration increases. The density of water also varies according to it's salinity. So this parameters influences stratification and species distribution.

MSP Challenge

In the MSP Challenge, the salinity data layer is static and does not influence any of the models.

North Sea

Not applicable.

This layer is not available in the North Sea Edition.

Baltic Sea

Types

• < 5 PSU
• 5 - 7.5 PSU
• 7.5 - 11 PSU
• 11 - 18 PSU
• > 18 PSU

PSU stands for Practical Salinity Unit, which is a unit based on the properties of sea water conductivity. It is equivalent to per thousand or to  g/kg (ifremer, accessed on 2022-02-08).

Metadata

Data Source

BALANCE project, retrieved from HELCOM, acessed on 2018-06-11

Original Title

Modelled bottom salinity (BALANCE)

Description

"This dataset was produced by NERI, Denmark, for the BSR INTERREG IIIB project BALANCE. Due to the stratification in the Baltic Sea it was decided to use bottom salinity for the development of the benthic marine landscapes and difference in surface to bottom salinity for the pelagic landscapes. The following 6 categories of annual mean salinity were applied delineating the Kattegat and the Baltic Sea into regions with differences in salinity regime (fig. 15): I. Oligohaline I (< 5psu). II. Oligohaline II (5 - 7.5psu). III. Mesohaline I (7.5 - 11psu). IV. Mesohaline II (11 - 18psu). V. Polyhaline (18 - 30psu). VI. Euhaline (>30psu)."

Information retrieved from HELCOM's metadata page for this resource (2021-07-20).

Creation Date

Not available. Publication date: 2008-01-01

Methodology

Integrated directly in the platform.

Clyde Marine Region

Not applicable.

This layer is not available in the Clyde Marine Region Edition.

Adriatic Sea

Not applicable.

This layer is not available in the Adriatic Sea Edition.