From the British Antarctic Survey and the University of East Anglia comes one of those press releases where I just have to wonder if this won’t eventually go the way of the “global warming causes mutated frogs” claim that turned out to be a parasite and not global warming. After all, it is well known that ships ballast can transport invasive species to places they normally would not migrate to, so with eco-tourism in Antarctica being all the rage now, I wonder if the issue isn’t somehow related to the snails being more susceptible due to some such influence? After all, how did they survive climate shifts (with changes to ocean pH) for millions of years if nature so poorly equipped them? I’m just not convinced that a slight shift (-0.11) to the ocean pH being more neutral than basic is the cause of this. The oceans are still basic at ~8.069, not acidic. To be acidic they’d have to be less than 7.0 See table.
On the plus side, they avoided that ridiculous “canary in the coal mine” meme in this PR.
First evidence of ocean acidification affecting live marine creatures in the Southern Ocean
The shells of marine snails – known as pteropods – living in the seas around Antarctica are being dissolved by ocean acidification according to a new study published this week in the journal Nature Geoscience. These tiny animals are a valuable food source for fish and birds and play an important role in the oceanic carbon cycle*.
During a science cruise in 2008, researchers from British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and the University of East Anglia (UEA), in collaboration with colleagues from the US Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), discovered severe dissolution of the shells of living pteropods in Southern Ocean waters.
The team examined an area of upwelling, where winds cause cold water to be pushed upwards from the deep to the surface of the ocean. Upwelled water is usually more corrosive to a particular type of calcium carbonate (aragonite) that pteropods use to build their shells. The team found that as a result of the additional influence of ocean acidification, this corrosive water severely dissolved the shells of pteropods.
Above: before and after images.
Ocean acidification is caused by the uptake of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere emitted as a result of fossil fuel burning. A number of laboratory experiments have demonstrated the potential effect of ocean acidification on marine organisms. However, to date, there has been little evidence of such impacts occurring to live specimens in their natural environment. The finding supports predictions that the impact of ocean acidification on marine ecosystems and food webs may be significant.
Lead author, Dr Nina Bednaršek, formerly of BAS and UEA, and now of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) says:
“We know that the seawater becomes more corrosive to aragonite shells below a certain depth – called the ‘saturation horizon’ – which occurs at around 1000m depth. However, at one of our sampling sites, we discovered that this point was reached at 200m depth, through a combination of natural upwelling and ocean acidification. Marine snails – pteropods – live in this top layer of the ocean. The corrosive properties of the water caused shells of live animals to be severely dissolved and this demonstrates how vulnerable pteropods are. Ocean acidification, resulting from the addition of human-induced carbon dioxide, contributed to this dissolution. ”
Co-author and science cruise leader, Dr Geraint Tarling from BAS, says:
“Although the upwelling sites are natural phenomena that occur throughout the Southern Ocean, instances where they bring the ‘saturation horizon’ above 200m will become more frequent as ocean acidification intensifies in the coming years. As one of only a few oceanic creatures that build their shells out of aragonite in the polar regions, pteropods are an important food source for fish and birds as well as a good indicator of ecosystem health. The tiny snails do not necessarily die as a result of their shells dissolving, however it may increase their vulnerability to predation and infection consequently having an impact to other parts of the food web.”
Co-author, Dr Dorothee Bakker from the University of East Anglia, says:
“Climate models project a continued intensification in Southern Ocean winds throughout the 21st century if atmospheric carbon dioxide continues to increase. In turn, this will increase wind-driven upwelling and potentially make instances of deep water – which is under-saturated in aragonite – penetrating into the upper ocean more frequent. Current predictions are for the ‘saturation horizon’ for aragonite to reach the upper surface layers of the Southern Ocean by 2050 in winter and by 2100 year round. ”
This research was funded by the UK Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and the European Union Marie Curie Early Stage Training Network.
Extensive dissolution of live pteropods in the Southern Ocean by N. Bednaršek, G. A. Tarling, D. C. E. Bakker, S. Fielding, E. M. Jones, H. J. Venables, P. Ward, A.Kuzirian, B. Lézé, R. A. Feely, and E. H. Murphy is published in the journal Nature Geoscience.
Abstract:
The carbonate chemistry of the surface ocean is rapidly changing with ocean acidification, a result of human activities1. In the upper layers of the Southern Ocean, aragonite—a
metastable form of calcium carbonate with rapid dissolution kinetics—may become undersaturated by 2050 (ref. 2). Aragonite undersaturation is likely to affect aragonite-shelled organisms, which can dominate surface water communities in polar regions3. Here we present analyses of specimens of the pteropod Limacina helicina antarctica that were extracted live from the Southern Ocean early in 2008. We sampled from the top 200m of the water column, where aragonite saturation levels are around 1 as upwelled deep water is mixed with surface water containing anthropogenic CO2. Comparing the shell structure with samples from aragonite-supersaturated regions elsewhere under a scanning electron microscope, we found severe levels of shell dissolution in the undersaturated region but not elsewhere. According to laboratory incubations of intact samples with a range of aragonite saturation levels, eight days of incubation in aragonite saturation levels of 0.94–1.12 produced equivalent levels of dissolution. As deep-water upwelling and CO2 absorption by surface waters is likely to increase as a result of human activities2,4, we conclude that upper ocean regions where aragonite-shelled organisms are affected by dissolution are likely to expand.
The paper is available here: ftp://ftp.nerc-bas.ac.uk/pub/photo/PR-2012-13-Tarling/ngeo1635_GT%20edits.pdf
Yet more silly claims about oceans which are less acidic than the pH of pure water.
The BBC was all over this one like a slug on lettuce:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/20461646
From trafamadore on November 26, 2012 at 9:20 pm:
Not usually. Usually, extinction is the name of the game. Sorry. All of the great changes in global temperatures have resulted in mass extinctions.
You say that like mass extinctions are a bad thing. Are you upset at existing? Is it disappointing that they lead to the rise of the mammals and thus subsequently humans?
The expected global temperature increases are hardly that great, humans and the other species have faced greater during just this interglacial.
Besides, my researching shows the “Big Five” mass extinctions of the past 500 million years are attributable as given in this piece, some combination of massive volcanism, asteroid/comet impact, and/or global cooling. Global warming, like this mild stuff we have now? Nah.
Maybe you could check things before embarrassing yourself?
I did check beforehand, got hung up on the exponent sign change. Already corrected myself.
In any case, if you’re really worried about not embarrassing yourself:
1. Never post anything online. Someone will gladly point out its flaws, even the non-existent ones.
2. Stay out of science. It’s expected that others will probe your work for flaws, if your work was posted publicly then the flaws will also be made public, and you should welcome it, as that’s how science works. Peer review is to keep junk papers from being published, but it also saves authors from making public their boneheaded mistakes, often because they’re too close to their work and haven’t sought sufficient outside review.
If you don’t want to make your work public because you’re afraid someone will find something wrong with it, you shouldn’t be a scientist in name, as you’re already not one in fact.
Alex the skeptic says:
This is all the usual annual pre-hyping for the climate-fest-orgy COP 18 being held at the global warming state of Qatar, the highest per-capita CO2 emitter.
All delegates will suffer from heat stroke, thus, what with the effect on their mental capacity and the 45C temperature they would anyway feel, the scammers will hope that the delegates would vote for keeping the AGW hypothesis and the trillions of dollars that come with it on life support.
Wonder if this means we can expect unusually cold weather in the Persian Gulf 🙂
Maybe next year they’ll try for the Republic of Ecuador without realising that altitude trumps latitude when it comes to the temperature in Quito…
No. Sea water is densest when coldest. Observe this ultra-briney ultra-cold Finger of Death:
http://www.ebaumsworld.com/video/watch/82037540/
Shell fish and clams live in fresh water too… with pH down in the 5 ish and 4 ish ranges…
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2012/03/08/clams-do-fine-in-acid-water/
So these folks found that when DEEP WATER that has been well away from CO2 for how many hundreds of years? is raised up it causes the same effect as when that deep water is, well, deep.
Sounds to me like it’s a function of the chemistry of the deep water, not the atmospheric influenced surface waters… Perhaps it is too deficient in carbonate ions for the shell fish to make shells? Adding CO2 to water can help form shells in aquarium environments…
AndyG55 said on November 26, 2012 at 10:26 pm:
umm.. pH is the negative log[H+]
It’s the same. pH = -log₁₀[H+] = log₁₀(1/[H+])
ex. -log₁₀(10^-3) = 3 = log₁₀(1/(10^-3))
Has anyone asked the oceans alarmists how much man made carbon dioxide they believe has dissolved in the seas to cause this? And then asked the atmospheres alarmists how much is in the atmosphere causing the warming? And then see if it adds up to our output?
I’m guessing it is, magically, in both places at the same time.
Also how do warming seas absorb more of a gas?
MattS commented on On noes! “Records of naked-eye sunspot observations in China go back to at least 28 BCE.”
Matt, instead of you making the Chinese liars – please; you personally count and tell us the number of sunspots will be tomorrow and tell us next day, please, please; let people judge your honesty!
For the rest of you interested in the truth:
1] they were blocking the sun with a cardboard and looking at the corona activity,/ sun-flares since the beginning of the last century. Unfortunately, the sun-flares where affecting where the earth will be in 6 months, minus 8 minutes = not a big deal.
2] in 95 discovered with a good filter that: the sun surface is not just red – year after filter was improved and was able to see what we can see now..
3] the shonks had phony ”GLOBAL” temp charts, with ”precision in hundredth of a degree”, for distant past. Those ”GLOBAL temp charts look as seismographs = the biggest CON jobs – so they pined against those charts imaginary sunspots, to fit their con charts.. and BINGO – sunspots inserted; as ”double proof”
4] to cover up the original con: if some alluvial soil in Colorado canyon suggests extra rain = they were shamelessly declaring the WHOLE planet warmer – other deposit suggests less rainfall -> they declare: cooler planet by 0,5C. Even though, the canyon can’t say even about all of Colorado’s temperature. For the shonks was GLOBAL…?!
B] If some text said: 1678 was 12 bushels of grain per hectare in Yorkshire / England = they were declaring: it was warmer, the WHOLE planet, by 0,3C == next year didn’t rain – 11,5 bushels per acre = the WHOLE PLANET was colder! from Antarctic, Oceania, both Americs; because the locust damaged some crops (was no pesticide).. and so on. To justify the million lies -> they added up sunspots on the top of it. Climatology is THE oldest profession, not the other one; yes, both of those professions ask for money in advance – but the second oldest delivers the goods
For more evidences of their ”proxy lies” see here:: http://globalwarmingdenier.wordpress.com/2012/08/25/skeptics-stinky-skeletons-from-their-closet/
Upwelling is often due to winds blowing surface water away from a shore line. Therefore upwelling is due to weather patterns. There is little doubt that this can have a huge effect on fisheries. The waters off Peru can be practically devoid of fish, during a warm El Nino when upwelling is far less, however when the pattern shifts to La Nina and cold, nutrient-filled waters upwell, the fisheries boom. (I’ve never heard of anything disolving, however.)
I think this study is interesting, and may have some value, because it may suggest how changing weather patterns effect future fisheries. However the mention of CO2 is merely tacked-on to seek future funding. (There is likely a joke there, concerning “fishing for funding.” )
Are the BAS citing those dreadful experiments by Southampton University? CO2 was bubbled through sea water to alter the pH, which it failed to do, so HCl, hydrochloric acid, was introduced to alter the pH which it did and dissolved sea shells. Unfortunately for them ocean water does not contain HCl.
Has such damage seen in nature? Not to my knowledge though there are some parasitic worms that bore through mollusc shell to feed on the animal inside and this damage could be taken as caused by acidic sea water.
I thought this article was a spoof when I first read it. Then my BSometer went off scale.
Large parts of the ocean floor are anoxic, including Antarctica. In other words they are oxygen starved and relatively sulphide rich..If an ‘upwelling’ brings some of this material near to surface, the sulphides will oxidise forming sulphuric acid. Of course, as others have suggested here, there could be some volcanic vents causing the problem.
This is common sense 101.
Those guys with their AGW are so last year. Here’s the latest defence (defense) against today’s doom – Bovine Global Warming http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/onepercent/2012/11/wireless-network-of-cows-to-ke.html
andrewmharding says:
November 26, 2012 at 12:36 pm
Anthony, could we please have an archive on WUWT devoted to the most crazy claims of AGW “scientists”? There could be an annual prize for the most bizarre piece of “research” based on votes by WUWT readers.
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Or Ric Werme could add that category to a Guide to WUWT and it could be featured once a year for voting.
kadaka: You say that like mass extinctions are a bad thing. Are you upset at existing? Is it disappointing that they lead to the rise of the mammals and thus subsequently humans?
Huh? What creature are you rooting for after humans go extinct? I agree that the mass die offs of the past led to us, but I don’t favor us being part of the next.
kadaka: The expected global temperature increases are hardly that great, humans and the other species have faced greater during just this interglacial.
The problem isn’t where we are, it’s where we are going that is worrying.
kadaka: Besides, my researching shows the “Big Five” mass extinctions of the past 500 million years are attributable as given in this piece, some combination of massive volcanism, asteroid/comet impact, and/or global cooling. Global warming, like this mild stuff we have now? Nah.
Two points from your “researching”:
1. Most creatures can not adapt to major changes in the environment when they are sudden.
2. Rapid cooling changes would be expected to affect life just as severely as rapid heating.
-t
ferd berple says:
November 26, 2012 at 9:48 pm
“The only way this can happen is to deny the poor of the world the benefits that the likes of Al Gore and Jim Hansen enjoy today.”
Yes, because that is the true agenda of elitists. As we all know, everyone is equal but some are more equal than others.
Mughal says:
November 26, 2012 at 5:33 pm
….It’s bloody obvious that CO2 emissions will change the pH of the ocean. How can anyone dispute that?….
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NO, It is not bloody obvious
At least not to a chemist.
Ever hear of a BUFFERED Solution? HMMmm – I thought not. Your ignorance is showing and your lack of education.
Here – educate yourself – PDF
kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
November 26, 2012 at 7:36 pm
…..Evolution can work far more faster than you expect….
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Yes, Just ask Dr. Horton “Beep” Hobbs. Dump normal crayfish in a cave pool and watch how fast they turn into blind crayfish.
higley7 @ur momisugly November 26, 2012 at 7:56 pm:
Jeez, you flunk my sophomore high school chemistry quiz. Acidification at any pH involved decreasing the pH value, which is the =log[H+]. Acidifying means INCREASING the [H+]!!!!!!!
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My lord is this guy a high school chemistry teacher? No wonder I could not find a satisfactory lab tech for my lab who was under the age of 35!
Dude, it is called neutralizing whether you are adding a base to an acid to bring it toward a pH of 7 or adding an acid to bring a base toward a pH of 7.
Acidification is an inflammatory word used by activists not chemists.
@stefanthedenier,
Your entire reply to me is a non sequitur. I made no claim linking sunspots to climate. I merely cited evidence of written historical records that people were observing and counting sunspots hundreds of years ago.
There is no evidence at your link showing or for that matter even claiming that these historical records are recent forgeries.
Leif Svalgaard is a frequent commenter here on solar issues. He is a published solar scientist. He is also very critical of those who try to show a link between solar activity and climate.
http://www.leif.org/research/
Here is something from Leif that shows some of the history in counting sunspots.
http://www.leif.org/research/Sunspot-Calibration.pdf
There is nothing dishonest here and nothing linking sunspots to climate. Just evidence that people have been counting sunspots systematically long before the global warming scare came along and that your claim that we didn’t even know that sunspots existed until the mid 1990s is preposterous.
“The carbonate chemistry of the surface ocean is rapidly changing with ocean acidification, a result of human activities.”
Statements like this really get on my nerves. Given that humans contribute only 3 percent of the overall amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, should this statement not say “The carbonate chemistry of the surface ocean is rapidly changing with ocean acidification, for which human activities are 3 percent responsible”?
trafamadore says:
November 26, 2012 at 9:20 pm
…Not usually. Usually, extinction is the name of the game. Sorry. All of the great changes in global temperatures have resulted in mass extinctions….
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Since when has Nature ever been considered benign? Seems the ‘Bambi Syndrone’ is at work again. Evolution works that way. Conditions change and the hardiest individuals/species survive to breed. The entire history of life on earth has been based on extinction of species that could not hack changing conditions. Change happens, change is always going to happen, nothing stands still – That is life get over it.
Oh and those ‘great changes in global temperatures’ ??? Dr. Nir Shaviv (Physics) thinks (backed by observations) there is a connection between Ice Age Epochs and Milky Way Spiral Arm Passages
Here is a peer-reviewed paper on the same subject:
stefanthedenier says:
November 27, 2012 at 2:06 am
Matt, instead of you making the Chinese liar….
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You make absolutely no sense.
Chad at 121126 6:46PM wrote:
“A relative of mine is a senior chemist at a large corporation, and he informed me that he and his colleagues almost always prefer to use pH numbers when attempting to modify a solution to a higher or lower pH. Just curious – are you saying that they are a minority? Thanks.”
Chad:
I’m not quite sure what you mean here. Certainly, providing numbers is always quantitatively stipulated, viz. I wish to change the pH of the buffer from 7.7 to 7.3. But, also chemists speak in qualitative terms, viz. “Yeah, I’m working on making this buffer slightly more acidic.” Note the double meaning here by intention: the buffer is alkaline (at 25-deg C anyway) at both pH’s, but the process is to make the buffer more acidic (or less alkaline if you prefer) than it was.
If I’m misconstruing your question, please advise. PY
coke2010 says:
November 27, 2012 at 5:47 am
“The carbonate chemistry of the surface ocean is rapidly changing with ocean acidification, a result of human activities.”
Statements like this really get on my nerves. Given that humans contribute only 3 percent of the overall amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, should this statement not say “The carbonate chemistry of the surface ocean is rapidly changing with ocean acidification, for which human activities are 3 percent responsible”?
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But if they can’t/don’t attribute what Ma Gaia is doing to human activity then they have no reason to control human activity.
That’s the goal. CAGW is the (current) lever.
Poor Yorek says:
November 26, 2012 at 4:15 pm
“3. The pH scale is temperature dependent. At physiological temperatures, neutral pH ~ 6.7, whereas at, say, 10-deg C, neutral pH ~ 7.3 or so. This shift is mediated primarily on the endothermic nature of the H2O + H2O = H3O^1+ + OH^1- reaction. Thus, pH = 7.0 can be itself “acidic,” neutral, or “alkaline,” depending on the temperature.
4. Someone above wrote that “This surely means corrosiveness can be described with a parabola.” Whilst there is some degree of truth to this, I submit that the problem is with what we mean by corrosive: the term is descriptive rather than precise. Substances quite indifferent to alkaline conditions are readily attacked under acidic conditions and vice versa. For that matter, not even all acids are equally corrosive as, for example, nitric acid is a much more powerful oxidizing agent than hydrochloric or sulfuric (at similar concentrations) and, thus, much more “destructive” towards metal parts.”
Thanks. The paragraphs above and your preceding explanations were helpful and I can see the problem of relativity with acids, alkaline and temperature. However it is still the case that PH8 is not acidic. If substances can be indifferent to alkaline conditions then when they are within the Alkaline part of the PH scale, even at 10 C, they cannot be affected by acidity even if the PH direction is towards acidic. The conditions have to be acidic not ‘heading in that direction’.
Also you say: “it is quite standard and correct to refer to pH = 7.8 as being acidic relative to pH = 8.0 (or pH = 5.8 as being alkaline relative to pH = 5.5). ”
This sounds as if those accustomed to working with the PH scale have adopted a language or custom that attempts to describe the relationship between more than one PH. But considering the scale is only 14 units long it’s not difficult to work out which direction it’s going and which side of the scale its on, which means PH 5.8 is not alkaline. While describing things becoming acidic or alkaline, when they are in the other part of the scale, might be useful to the chemist I’m not sure those outside chemistry interpret reports that ‘the oceans are becoming acidic’ in such a ‘practical’ way.