Vienna Standard Mean Ocean Water

Vienna Standard Mean Ocean Water (VSMOW) is an isotopic standard for water, that is, a particular sample of water whose proportions of different isotopes of hydrogen and oxygen are accurately known. VSMOW is distilled from ocean water and does not contain salt or other impurities. Published and distributed by the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency in 1968, the standard and its essentially identical successor, VSMOW2, continue to be used as a reference material.

Water samples made up of different isotopes of hydrogen and oxygen have slightly different physical properties. As an extreme example, heavy water, which contains two deuterium (²H) atoms instead of the usual, lighter hydrogen-1 (¹H), has a melting point of 3.82 °C (38.88 °F) and boiling point of 101.4 °C (214.5 °F).^[1] Different rates of evaporation cause water samples from different places in the water cycle to contain slightly different ratios of isotopes. Ocean water (richer in heavy isotopes) and rain water (poorer in heavy isotopes) roughly represent the two extremes found on Earth. With VSMOW, the IAEA simultaneously published an analogous standard for rain water, Standard Light Antarctic Precipitation (SLAP), and eventually its successor SLAP2. SLAP contains about 5% less oxygen-18 and 42.8% less deuterium than VSMOW.

A scale based on VSMOW and SLAP is used to report oxygen-18 and deuterium concentrations. From 2005 until its redefinition in 2019, the kelvin was specified to be 1/273.16 of the temperature of specifically VSMOW at its triple point.