Reposted from Jo Nova, who did such a good job I decided there wasn’t any way I could improve on it, except to add the map at right. This needed the wide attention WUWT brings.
Scripps blockbuster: Ocean acidification happens all the time — naturally
There goes another scare campaign.
Until recently we had very little data about real time changes in ocean pH around the world. Finally autonomous sensors placed in a variety of ecosystems “from tropical to polar, open-ocean to coastal, kelp forest to coral reef” give us the information we needed.
It turns out that far from being a stable pH, spots all over the world are constantly changing. One spot in the ocean varied by an astonishing 1.4 pH units regularly. All our human emissions are projected by models to change the world’s oceans by about 0.3 pH units over the next 90 years, and that’s referred to as “catastrophic”, yet we now know that fish and some calcifying critters adapt naturally to changes far larger than that every year, sometimes in just a month, and in extreme cases, in just a day.
Data was collected by 15 individual SeaFET sensors in seven types of marine habitats. Four sites were fairly stable (1, which includes the open ocean, and also sites 2,3,4) but most of the rest were highly variable (esp site 15 near Italy and 14 near Mexico) . On a monthly scale the pH varies by 0.024 to 1.430 pH units.
Figure 1. Map of pH sensor (SeaFET) deployment locations.
See Table 1 for details of locations
The authors draw two conclusions: (1) most non-open ocean sites vary a lot, and (2) and some spots vary so much they reach the “extreme” pH’s forecast for the doomsday future scenarios on a daily (a daily!) basis.
At Puerto Morelos (in Mexico’s easternmost state, on the Yucatán Peninsula) the pH varied as much as 0.3 units per hour due to groundwater springs. Each day the pH bottomed at about 10am, and peaked shortly after sunset. These extreme sites tell us that some marine life can cope with larger, faster swings than the apocalyptic predictions suggest, though of course, no one is suggesting that the entire global ocean would be happy with similar extreme swings.
Even the more stable and vast open ocean is not a fixed pH all year round. Hofmann writes that “Open-water areas (in the Southern Ocean) experience a strong seasonal shift in seawater pH (~0.3–0.5 units) between austral summer and winter.”
This paper is such a game changer, they talk about rewriting the null hypothesis:
“This natural variability has prompted the suggestion that “an appropriate null hypothesis may be, until evidence is obtained to the contrary, that major biogeochemical processes in the oceans other than calcification will not be fundamentally different under future higher CO2/lower pH conditions””
Matt Ridley: Taking Fears Of Acid Oceans With A Grain of Salt
[GWPF] [Wall St Journal]
The central concern is that lower pH will make it harder for corals, clams and other “calcifier” creatures to make calcium carbonate skeletons and shells. Yet this concern also may be overstated. Off Papua New Guinea and the Italian island of Ischia, where natural carbon-dioxide bubbles from volcanic vents make the sea less alkaline, and off the Yucatan, where underwater springs make seawater actually acidic, studies have shown that at least some kinds of calcifiers still thrive—at least as far down as pH 7.8.
In a recent experiment in the Mediterranean, reported in Nature Climate Change, corals and mollusks were transplanted to lower pH sites, where they proved “able to calcify and grow at even faster than normal rates when exposed to the high [carbon-dioxide] levels projected for the next 300 years.” In any case, freshwater mussels thrive in Scottish rivers, where the pH is as low as five.
Human beings have indeed placed marine ecosystems under terrible pressure, but the chief culprits are overfishing and pollution. By comparison, a very slow reduction in the alkalinity of the oceans, well within the range of natural variation, is a modest threat, and it certainly does not merit apocalyptic headlines.
We also know that adding CO2 in a sense is feeding the calcifying organisms (like it feeds life above the water too). Co2 dissolves as bicarbonate, which marine uses to make skeletons and shells from. So yes, a lower pH dissolves shells, but the extra CO2 increases shell formation.
..
Figure 2. pH dynamics at 15 locations worldwide in 0–15 m water depth. All panels are plotted on the same vertical range of pH (total hydrogen ion scale). The ordinate axis was arbitrarily selected to encompass a 30-day period during each sensor deployment representative of each site during the deployment season. See Table 1 for details regarding sensor deployment.
…
Figure 3. Metrics of short-term pH variability at 15 locations worldwide, ranked by ascending values. Mean = geometric mean; Max = maximum value recorded; Min = minimum value recorded; SD = standard deviation; Range = Max – Min; Rate = mean of the absolute rate of change between adjacent data points.
There are caveats: possibly marine life is already operating at the “edge of it’s tolerances” (we don’t know), so pushing things further may be still detrimental. Also these extreme environments don’t have the same variety of organisms that less extreme ones do, so we don’t really want to convert the whole equatorial ocean into life as it exists in one Mexican Bay. But conditions in some places are changing more on daily basis than we are being warned to fear from a century long trend.
The bottom line is that claims that these pH changes are unprecedented, fast or unnatural are overstating things dramatically. Typical estuarine environments have an inflow from rivers (with a lower pH) that fluctuates wildly, so do areas with upwelling, and even the pH in kelp forests varies dynamically.
The alarmist headlines, fears of mass starvation, and satanic allusions are unjustified:
‘Scientists label this acid trend “the evil twin of climate change”.
Anthropogenic climate change set to trigger tipping points,
Ocean acid threatens food chain,
Bbc News – ‘Acidifying oceans’ threaten food supply, Uk warns,
What we don’t know vastly eclipses what we do. We need to study the effects of human emissions of CO2, but not at the expense of other far more pressing threats.
If we care about ocean-life (not to mention our food supply) we need to focus on things that threaten it now.
REFERENCES:
Hofmann GE, Smith JE, Johnson KS, Send U, Levin LA, et al. (2011) High-Frequency Dynamics of Ocean pH: A Multi-Ecosystem Comparison. PLoS ONE 6(12): e28983. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0028983 [PLOS paper and graphs sourced here]
Hat tip Brice Bosnich (who wrote the post: The chemistry of ocean pH and “acidification”).
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Matt Ridley: Taking Fears Of Acid Oceans With A Grain of Salt
Saturday, 07 January 2012, The Wall Street Journal (via the GWPF)
Coral reefs around the world are suffering badly from overfishing and various forms of pollution. Yet many experts argue that the greatest threat to them is the acidification of the oceans from the dissolving of man-made carbon dioxide emissions.
The effect of acidification, according to J.E.N. Veron, an Australian coral scientist, will be “nothing less than catastrophic…. What were once thriving coral gardens that supported the greatest biodiversity of the marine realm will become red-black bacterial slime, and they will stay that way.”
This is a common view. The Natural Resources Defense Council has called ocean acidification “the scariest environmental problem you’ve never heard of.” Sigourney Weaver, who narrated a film about the issue, said that “the scientists are freaked out.” The head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration calls it global warming’s “equally evil twin.”
But do the scientific data support such alarm? Last month scientists at San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography and other authors published a study showing how much the pH level (measuring alkalinity versus acidity) varies naturally between parts of the ocean and at different times of the day, month and year.
“On both a monthly and annual scale, even the most stable open ocean sites see pH changes many times larger than the annual rate of acidification,” say the authors of the study, adding that because good instruments to measure ocean pH have only recently been deployed, “this variation has been under-appreciated.” Over coral reefs, the pH decline between dusk and dawn is almost half as much as the decrease in average pH expected over the next 100 years. The noise is greater than the signal.
Another recent study, by scientists from the U.K., Hawaii and Massachusetts, concluded that “marine and freshwater assemblages have always experienced variable pH conditions,” and that “in many freshwater lakes, pH changes that are orders of magnitude greater than those projected for the 22nd-century oceans can occur over periods of hours.”
This adds to other hints that the ocean-acidification problem may have been exaggerated. For a start, the ocean is alkaline and in no danger of becoming acid (despite headlines like that from Reuters in 2009: “Climate Change Turning Seas Acid”). If the average pH of the ocean drops to 7.8 from 8.1 by 2100 as predicted, it will still be well above seven, the neutral point where alkalinity becomes acidity.
The central concern is that lower pH will make it harder for corals, clams and other “calcifier” creatures to make calcium carbonate skeletons and shells. Yet this concern also may be overstated. Off Papua New Guinea and the Italian island of Ischia, where natural carbon-dioxide bubbles from volcanic vents make the sea less alkaline, and off the Yucatan, where underwater springs make seawater actually acidic, studies have shown that at least some kinds of calcifiers still thrive—at least as far down as pH 7.8.
In a recent experiment in the Mediterranean, reported in Nature Climate Change, corals and mollusks were transplanted to lower pH sites, where they proved “able to calcify and grow at even faster than normal rates when exposed to the high [carbon-dioxide] levels projected for the next 300 years.” In any case, freshwater mussels thrive in Scottish rivers, where the pH is as low as five.
Laboratory experiments find that more marine creatures thrive than suffer when carbon dioxide lowers the pH level to 7.8. This is because the carbon dioxide dissolves mainly as bicarbonate, which many calcifiers use as raw material for carbonate.
Human beings have indeed placed marine ecosystems under terrible pressure, but the chief culprits are overfishing and pollution. By comparison, a very slow reduction in the alkalinity of the oceans, well within the range of natural variation, is a modest threat, and it certainly does not merit apocalyptic headlines.
Roger Lancaster says: January 9, 2012 at 2:25 pm
“The term “acidification” has always rather bothered me. This sounds like we are turning the sea into a giant acid bath. A more accurate term would be “de-alkalinization”. Words matter – they frame the debate.”
(my bold)
indeed, and this truth has been recognized for a very long time.
If language is not correct, then what is said is not what is meant; if what is said is not what is meant, then what must be done remains undone; if this remains undone, morals and art will deteriorate; if justice goes astray, the people will stand about in helpless confusion. Hence there must be no arbitrariness in what is said. This matters above everything.
~
The Master (also) said:
— Master Kong, 551-479 BCE (AKA Kǒng Fūzǐ, or Confucius)
It is language, perhaps more than anything else, that separates Man from the beasts. Language can be used to educate, but also to deceive.
Blast! more fugitive tags.
s/b
The words are Master Kong’s, not mine.
The information in this paper is not going to surprise many people, nor will the ideological review of a pragmatic science paper by Jo Nova .
From the paper:
“Admittedly, pH is only part of the story with regard to the biological impacts of OA on marine organisms.”
“The sites examined in this study do not comprehensively represent pH variability in coastal ecosystems, partly because we focused on surface epipelagic and shallow benthic pH variability. Many organisms that may be impacted by pH variability and ocean acidification reside at intermediate (>10 m) to abyssal depths”
“For all the marine habitats described above, one very important consideration is that the extreme range of environmental variability does not necessarily translate to extreme resistance to future OA.”
” At this juncture, it is not clear what aspect of this variability is most biologically significant (e.g. minimum pH, maximum pH, hours spent below the yearly mean low pH)”
“As a final note, we do concede that, like pCO2, pH may not tell the whole story. It may in fact be saturation state and not pH that is the main driver of the mechanistic and physiological impact of OA, at least for calcifying organisms.”
“There is also a need to monitor other hydrographic variables in addition to the carbonate system. Modern and paleo OA events are accompanied by shifts in temperature, stratification, and dissolved oxygen [82]. The impacts of OA can depend on values of interacting stressors such as temperature and oxygen, and pH may in turn alter tolerance to these stressors, with major consequences for organism function [83]. ”
This paper only deals with natural variation of the oceans pH which is definately not unknown nor undocumented…..
” We document a significant long-term decreasing trend of −0.0019 ± 0.0002 y−1 in surface pH, which is indistinguishable from the rate of acidification expected from equilibration with the atmosphere. Superimposed upon this trend is a strong seasonal pH cycle driven by temperature, mixing, and net photosynthetic CO2 assimilation. We also observe substantial interannual variability in surface pH, influenced by climate-induced fluctuations in upper ocean stability. Below the mixed layer, we find that the change in acidification is enhanced within distinct subsurface strata. These zones are influenced by remote water mass formation and intrusion, biological carbon remineralization, or both. We suggest that physical and biogeochemical processes alter the acidification rate with depth and time and must therefore be given due consideration when designing and interpreting ocean pH monitoring efforts and predictive models.”
is from Dore et al 2009 which combines 20 years of research. What is much more important and what hundreds of papers agree on is the TREND, or the point at where these variations will deviate from. This is much the same as terrestrial conditions. Just because a collection of animals have adapted to survive in the Sahara doesn’t mean there will be little consequences if the whole land mass changed to those conditions in a century or two, does it? This can be applied to the oceans also.
This interesting study into the short term VARIABILITY of ocean pH raises a lot of questions but does not (even try to) refute or debunk the research and observations that suggest the TREND in OA is putting us on the verge of a major catastrophe for our oceans. It is certainly not a “game changer”. The only thing “overhyped” here is Novas analysis.
Steve P says:
January 9, 2012 at 6:25 pm
Language can be used to educate, but also to deceive.
================
Exactly. When I was a practicing organic chemist, I’m sure I added acid to an aqueous solution at a higher pH and brought it closer to neutrality. I had no problem with the colloquial term “acidification” for this process then.
That was then. This is now. The fake-environmentalists are going to have to try harder to steal words from scientists for the purpose of deception of billions of people. Sorry fake-environmentalists, we’re onto you and your tricks.
Are daily and seasonal fluctuations in pH equivalent to daily and seasonal fluctuations in air temperature ? Night and day temp differences are usually much bigger than the AGW trend, but the average is more important.
Anthony-
It’s almost as if you didn’t read the paper at all:
“The sites examined in this study do not comprehensively represent pH variability in coastal ecosystems[.] Many organisms that may be impacted by pH variability and ocean acidification reside at intermediate and abyssal depths.”
After all the time you spent complaining about government sponsored research and, more to the point, monitoring, you see a journal article describing 15 sites taking measurements for as little as 30 days and you’re ready to declare the question of ocean acidification answered? This is a drastic departure from your previous positions regarding the veracity of monitoring data from sites that have not been thoroughly cataloged and photographed.
Can you explain these contradictory positions?
I think you meant the above inserted word to be there? That way it makes sense.
Not for me!
Cog Dis is a condition suffered by those exposed to observations contradicting opinions they are not willing to relinquish. In any case, a concept can’t be a mental response or condition.
But we see it above in those who cavil that a 0.3 pH change might be a “tipping point” for locales already at the edge of tolerance. That there is no shred of evidence they are at such an edge is just one of the larger holes in that POV. Actual experimental data like the following is pretty definitive:
So the Cog Dis yammering from pain and confusion begins.
Philincalifornia – “Corrosive anyone ?? Ha ha ha.Hello Rob Painting, Lazy Teenager, and Steven Mosher even ????”
You called?
I see Puget Sound is being classified as “waters of concern” due to ocean acidification. I think the corrosive nature of the water killing oyster larvae might play a part in that.
“Ocean acidification is putting the whole Puget Sound ecosystem at risk,” said Miyoko Sakashita, oceans director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Focusing on the entire Sound as a ‘water of concern’ because of ocean acidification is a key step toward monitoring the effects of this sea change and curbing those effects.”
Being acclimated to large pH fluctuations doesn’t seem to be helping those mussels and oysters. And yes, I know farmed oysters are not native to that area, but they did okay(ish) until the waters became corrosive. Native mussels are in trouble though.
Such cavils are merely attempts to blunt the obvious implications of the findings — no evidence, anywhere, of susceptibility to the mild de-caustification projected by overheated models. The authors have their next funding application in mind, as always.
John – “Why can calcifiers deal with higher CO2 and lower pH levles? Because they have survived time periods when CO2 was far higher, such as the end of the Eocene, 34 million years ago, when CO2 was typically around 1,100 ppm’.
Yes, and guess what happened to coral during the EECO (Early Eocene Climatic Optimum)? Coral took a bit of a pounding because of ocean acidification. I think you need to google silicate weathering – particularly the timescale that it, and the dissolution of seafloor calcium carbonates, operates. The whole thing doesn’t become so confusing then.
Rob Painting is so far out there that it’s not really worth responding. But being skeptical, I have to point out that the pH error bars are so wide compared with the putative rise in “acidity” that the alarmist crowd’s silly conclusions are risibly preposterous.
Painting needs to familiarize himrself with the scientific method, and he will begin to see how off-base his cognitive dissonance has misled him.
AndyG55 says:
January 9, 2012 at 2:25 pm
CO2 could make the oceans “LESS CAUSTIC”.
CO2 is neutralizing the oceans. Zero scare value to drum up funding with that one.
Rob Painting says:
January 9, 2012 at 7:59 pm
“Ocean acidification is putting the whole Puget Sound ecosystem at risk,”
Couldn’t have anything to do with the millions of people peeing into the Sound every day could it?
Rob P;
I’m not even going to bother responding to the Puget Sound bumpf again. The actual periodic upwelling that caused the problem has been documented many times. Threadjack BS.
Rob Painting says:
January 9, 2012 at 7:59 pm
===========
Thanks Rob for the link, supporting my exact point about the use of the term “ocean acidification” for organized deception.
@ferd
“CO2 is neutralizing the ocean”
where is the empirical data that shows this to be the case?… ie measurements.
AndyG55 says:
January 9, 2012 at 9:45 pm
where is the empirical data that shows this to be the case?… ie measurements.
In chemistry, adding acid to a base is called “neutralization”. It is only called acidification in the pseudo science of climatology.
What a surprise, the oceans are composed of salt water. Wonder how it got there.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutralization_(chemistry)
In chemistry, neutralization, or neutralisation (see spelling differences) is a chemical reaction in which an acid and a base react to form a salt. Water is frequently, but not necessarily, produced as well.
But wait, you producers of CO2 – be afraid. Like Sigourney Weaver’s Alien, the evil box jelly fish is not only surviving, it is thriving, despite the fact that pH levels are as low as 5.0:
http://www.news.appstate.edu/2009/04/10/box-jellyfish/
And they will still inject their poisonous venom – not with Alien acid – but with a deadly cocktail laced with alkaline proteins.
So my advice is this, until they start recommending bicarbonate of soda rather than vinegar as an antidote for the BJF, do not worry too much about Alien 5 eating out the bottom of your tinny.
http://lifeinthefastlane.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/jellyfish-cable-beach-warning.jpg
Ferd berple says:
“Couldn’t have anything to do with the millions of people peeing into the Sound every day could it?”
Or perhaps the fact that the entire Puget Sound/Juan de Fuca/Inside Passage region receives runoff from temperate rain forests with their load of tannic and humic acids. Bad rain forests. That couldn’t be a factor at all. /sarc
AndyG55 says:
January 9, 2012 at 9:45 pm
@ferd
“CO2 is neutralizing the ocean”
“”where is the empirical data that shows this to be the case?… ie measurements.””
Er, not sure if this is meant to have a sarc tag?
Empirical evidence. Ocean pH trending from pH 8.18 to 8.07, which is on it’s way to pH 7 = Neutral
AndyG55 says:
January 9, 2012 at 2:07 pm
“How was the reputed “ocean” change in pH from 8.2 to 8.1 measured ? ”
See IPCC AR4:
Climate Change 2007: Working Group I: The Physical Science Basis, 5.4.2.3 Ocean Acidification by Carbon Dioxide.11
“A decrease in surface pH of 0.1 over the global ocean was calculated from the estimated uptake of anthropogenic carbon between 1750 and 1994 (Sabine et al., 2004b; Raven et al., 2005), with the lowest decrease (0.06) in the tropics and subtropics, and the highest decrease (0.12) at high latitudes, consistent with the lower buffer capacity of the high latitudes compared to the low latitudes. The mean pH of surface waters ranges between 7.9 and 8.3 in the open ocean, so the ocean remains alkaline (pH > 7) even after these decreases.
The consequences of changes in pH on marine organisms are poorly known (see Section 7.3.4 and Box 7.3). For comparison, pH was higher by 0.1 unit during glaciations, and there is no evidence of pH values more than 0.6 units below the pre-industrial pH during the past 300 million years (Caldeira and Wickett, 2003)12. A decrease in ocean pH of 0.1 units corresponds to a 30% increase in the concentration of H+ in seawater, assuming that alkalinity and temperature remain constant.”
Hence we get the claim that “the ocean” has become 30% more acidic since the start of the industrial revolution. There is of course no such entity as the “Global Ocean”
NERC notes that:
Dr. Ken Caldeira and Dr. Michael Wickett from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the US were among the first to point out the problem in a Nature paper in 2003. This was followed up by a Royal Society report two years later. It was entitled, “Ocean acidification due to increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide.”
The members of the committee producing that report included one Dr. Ken Caldeira, at that time at Lawrence Livermore laboratory. He was accompanied by scientists from the University of East Anglia, Southampton University and Plymouth Marine Laboratory, both the latter institutions are part of the UK Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, the main body in the UK promoting draconian emissions control on behalf of the UK government and which is based at UEA.
For more background on this check out “Acid Seas – Back To Basic”, 12 February 2010
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/originals/acid_seas.html, and also “Lies, Damn Lies and Dying Shellfish Larvae”. http://home.comcast.net/~rlester06/lies_shellfish_scam.pdf
You might like to check out NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco’s video on the NOAA web site, showing how chalk dissolves in vinegar and that is what is happening to the oceans. You can view it here: http://www.noaa.gov/video/administrator/acidification/index.html
Such dishonesty…..
How many times have I blogged this!
The oceans have been at the present varying pH for hundreds of million years, one of oceanography’s main assumptions because no evidence has been found of anything different. Surface waters normal pH is between 7.8 and 8.4.
To Steven Skinner and others regarding shells dissolving:
There was a video on the net showing a carbonate plastic bottle slowly dissolving with increasing acidification. As far as I can tell, that is the start of the scare story about living creatures dissolving.
It’s not true, of course, at least not at levels of acidification (or decreases in alkalinity) up to at least 900 ppm of CO2, and probably considerably higher.
That is because calcifiers have seen these CO2 levels before and they are genetically capable of dealing with these levels. One way they deal is that calcifiers often have a coating that protects their carbonate structures from being dissolved — lobsters, for example, or crabs. Another is that these creatures keep adding carbonate structure.
Please see my post at 3:16 PM Jan 9 above for a reference in which experimenters grew 18 calcifiers from different families at CO2 levels of 400, 600, 900, and 2,850 ppm of CO2. None had net loss at 900 ppm.