THIS ARTICLE IS republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.
Firefighters battling the deadly wildfires that raced through the Los Angeles area in January 2025 have been hampered by a limited supply of fresh water. So, when the winds are calm enough, skilled pilots flying planes aptly named Super Scoopers are skimming off 1,500 gallons of sea water at a time and dumping it with high precision on the fires.
Using seawater to fight fires can sound like a simple solution—the Pacific Ocean has a