The IPCC writes in the “leaked” SPM
It is very likely that oceanic uptake of anthropogenic CO2 results in acidification of the ocean. The pH 44 (see 7) of seawater has decreased by 0.1 since the beginning of the industrial era, corresponding to a 45 26% increase in hydrogen ion concentration. {3.8.2; Box 3.2; FAQ 3.2}
later they say:
Earth System Models project a worldwide increase in ocean acidification for all RCP scenarios. The 1 corresponding decrease in surface ocean pH by the end of 21st century is 0.065 (0.06 to 0.07)12 for 2 RCP2.6, 0.145 (0.14 to 0.15) for RCP4.5, 0.203 (0.20 to 0.21) for RCP6.0, and 0.31 (0.30 to 0.32) for 3 RCP8.5 (see Figures SPM.6 and SPM.7). {6.4.4}
Here are the figures cited, SPM6C and SPM7D:
Gosh, just look at all that scary, red, burning, “acid”. What they fail to note is that the oceans still haven’t turned acidic at the end of their model projections. The pH has to be below 7.0, and a drop to 7.75 by 2100 still doesn’t qualify by the way the pH scale works. Note also, like the Richter earthquake scale, the pH scale is logarithmic, not linear, a drop of 1 unit in pH equals a ten-fold increase in acidity. So, there would have to be an acceleration for their model scenarios to become true. Note the normal ranges of for rainwater and streamwater flowing into the oceans are far lower than the model projections:
![184phdiagram[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/184phdiagram1.gif)
Meanwhile, while the IPCC is “virtually certain” a call goes out via the X-prize to design a pH meter actually capable of monitoring the projected change. The X Prize Foundation announced a $2 million competition September 9th to spur innovation in the equipment used to measure “ocean acidification”. Here is the announcement. Note what I highlighted in red.
=============================================================
Overview
The Challenge: Improve Our Understanding of Ocean Acidification
The Wendy Schmidt Ocean Health XPRIZE is a $2 million global competition that challenges teams of engineers, scientists and innovators from all over the world to create pH sensor technology that will affordably, accurately and efficiently measure ocean chemistry from its shallowest waters… to its deepest depths.
There are two prize purses available (teams may compete for, and win, both purses):
A. $1,000,000 Accuracy award – Performance focused ($750,000 First Place, $250,000 Second Place): To the teams that navigate the entire competition to produce the most accurate, stable and precise pH sensors under a variety of tests.
B. $1,000,000 Affordability award – Cost and Use focused ($750,000 First Place, $250,000 Second Place): To the teams that produce the least expensive, easy-to-use, accurate, stable, and precise pH sensors under a variety of tests.
The Need for the Prize
Problem
Our oceans are currently in the midst of a silent crisis. Rising levels of atmospheric carbon are resulting in higher levels of acidity. The potential biological, ecological, biogeochemical and societal implications are staggering. The absorption of human CO2 emissions is already having a profound impact on ocean chemistry, impacting the health of shellfish, fisheries, coral reefs, other ecosystems and our very survival.
The Market Failure
While ocean acidification is well documented in a few temperate ocean waters, little is known in high latitudes, coastal areas and the deep sea, and most current pH sensor technologies are too costly, imprecise, or unstable to allow for sufficient knowledge on the state of ocean acidification.
Solution
Breakthrough sensors are urgently needed for scientists, managers and industry to turn the tide on ocean acidification and begin healing our oceans. A competition to incentivize the creation of these sensors for the study and monitoring of ocean acidification’s impact on marine ecosystems and ocean health will drive industry forward by providing the data needed to take action and produce results.
Impact
Making a broad impact—one that reaches far beyond new sensing technologies—is critical to the success of the prize. It begins with a breakthrough pH sensor that will catalyze our ability to measure—and thus respond to—ocean acidification.
Source: http://oceanhealth.xprize.org/competition-details/overview
==============================================================
In the NBC News story I cited about the announcement there was this:
“It is only in the last decade where scientists have begun to study ocean acidification, so our knowledge is really limited still,” Paul Bunje, a senior director with the X Prize Foundation who is the lead scientist behind the ocean health competition, told NBC News.
“But we do know that we don’t know enough, and we don’t have the tools needed to even begin to measure it sufficiently — much less to begin to respond, to adapt to it, to implement local policies that might allow ocean acidification to be less harmful,” he said.
…
The open ocean is acidifying at about .02 pH units per decade, according to according to Richard Feeley, a marine scientist and leading researcher on ocean acidification at NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle. “That means that you have to have an instrument that you can rely on to be both precise and accurate for a very, very long period of time, so that you can actually see that signal,” he told NBC News.
So, are the IPCC models based on uncertain measurements and an assumed trend? It sure seems so.
It’s like a bad acid trip.
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Again, why is it that the “experts” continually ignore the most obvious and most simple of answers? The growing number of hydrothermal vent fields AND active submarine volcanoes discovered all the time now should be a HUGE red flag to them. These NATURAL resources of CO2 and Methane AND particulate matter-
1)acidify the water they are in
2)warm the water they are in
3)release huge amounts of methane and CO2 into the water
And they do it 24 hours a day for YEARS on end!
Not to mention that the particulate matter would remain in the water (unable to “cool the atmosphere” like a surface volcano’s particulates would) but the CO2 would rise and outgass quickly due to the temperatures of the water coming out of these things!
AND the CO2 signature from “burning fossil fuels” is IDENTICAL to the fingerprint of CO2 that comes from burning magma in the oceans. Fossil fuel doesn’t care how it gets burned, by your car or by the molten layer under the earth’s crust-it’s exactly the same signature.
Research is VERY limited and the “estimates” that the experts supposedly use to declare that their impact on our climate is “minimal” is laughable AND outdated. NOAA’s own website shows a current map with over 500 hydrothermal fields on it!
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/eoi/PlumeStudies/global-vents/index.html
From a NOAA research project done over a year’s time on ONE submarine volcanic site:
“The multiyear eruptive history of NW Rota-1 demonstrates that submarine volcanoes can be
significant and sustained sources of CO2 to the shallow ocean”
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/publications/search_abstract.php?fmContributionNum=3435
There are even “lakes” of liquid CO2 on the ocean floor for crying out loud.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/08/060830-carbon-lakes.html
If all of this is true, the CO2 problem is solved and it has nothing to do with Human beings!
richardscourtney says: September 25, 2013 at 12:44 pm
“This pH monitoring is another example of climate science at its best.”
It isn’t climate science, it’s oceanography. Your objection is a silly one. What I said is simply true – solid state pH sensors avoid the need for lab analysis, if you want to know pH. If you want to know the whole picture, you will need other information.
It’s not a situation that I invented – I’m just describing what people actually do, and why.
There I was – reading through the comments and wondering why some warmista hadn’t commented and thinking, ‘they don’t have a leg to stand on’ – and then up pops Nick Stokes with a load of arm waving and does not acknowledge the primary problem .i.e – if we can’t measure the ocean pH – how the feck do we know it is ‘wrong’ or indeed ‘changing’.
The ocean acidification problem is another false scare tactic. Measuring ocean pH is almost impossible without gazillions of readings – a bit like the atmospheric temperature? – and even if they got a gadget and started to get proper fmeasurements, I’m sure they would require adjustments – again, just like atmospheric temperature readings! LOL!
Idiots, to a Mann !
Nick Stokes:
I am replying to your evasion at September 25, 2013 at 1:03 pm.
No, it is not true that you are “just describing what people actually do, and why”. You are supporting the ‘goal post moving’ from the failing AGW-scare to the alternative so-called ‘ocean acidification’ scare.
And you asserted a falsehood when you asserted
It DOES need the lab. analyses despite your repeated protestations to the contrary. I don’t need to spell this out because Phil conveniently provided an explanation – with example – in the link he provided in his post at September 25, 2013 at 12:45 pm.
To save you needing to find Phil’s link, I copy it to here
http://debunkhouse.wordpress.com/2011/02/17/chicken-little-of-the-sea-visits-station-aloha/
Richard
I love the percentage increase in hydrogen ion concentration. I think they should be required to specify, from 0.0000000079M to 0.000000010 M.
I disagree with the objection that this isn’t acidification when your solution is still basic – it’s legitimate to start with the pH of your buffer system before you start perturbing it, rather than that of neutral water, which oceans aren’t – but I agree that the way it’s presented, the layman would get the impression that the oceans are on the acidic side of neutral, and on their way to being corrosively so. Certainly the red on the map (like a red pH strip) connotes that.
“The IPCC on acid…
======================================================================
If that was intentional, great line!
If it was unintentional, great line!
(Some here may remember what acid did to reality.)
It took until 2011 to find proof that Deep Sea Volcanoes EXPLODE. (Because prior to that, scientists didn’t think that they COULD actually explode/erupt like land volcanoes do). They also found out that their CO2 estimates from submarine volcanoes was too low:
http://www.scientificcomputing.com/news/2011/03/deep-sea-volcanoes-proven-explode#.UkNGsn9KZik
“By using an ion microprobe, Christoph Helo, a Ph.D. student in McGill University’s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, has discovered very high concentrations of CO2 in droplets of magma trapped within crystals recovered from volcanic ash deposits on Axial Volcano on the Juan de Fuca Ridge, off the coast of Oregon.
These entrapped droplets represent the state of the magma prior to eruption. As a result, Helo and fellow researchers from McGill, the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, have been able to prove that explosive eruptions can indeed occur in deep-sea volcanoes. Their work also shows that the release of CO2 from the deeper mantle to the Earth’s atmosphere, at least in certain parts of mid-ocean ridges, is much higher than had previously been imagined.”
Really??? CO2 release is “much higher” than previously imagined???? Did anyone adjust the IPCC estimates?
JPS says:
September 25, 2013 at 1:15 pm
agreed. acidifying (or acidification) is the correct word for making ‘less alkaline’ and of course, it sounds much more frightening and alarmist than ‘reduced alkalinity’ !
lemiere jacques says:
September 25, 2013 at 9:44 am
Just as the are sure heat went in deep ocean even it is very frustrating they can t mesasurere it yet.
I am not certain we agree on the meaning of being certain.
————————————————————————-
I bet Bill Clinton could shed some light on the topic.
richardscourtney says: September 25, 2013 at 1:13 pm
“It DOES need the lab. analyses despite your repeated protestations to the contrary. I don’t need to spell this out because Phil conveniently provided an explanation – with example – in the link he provided in his post at September 25, 2013 at 12:45 pm.”
Well, I’ll repeat it again, because it’s obvious – a SeaFET needs no lab analysis. It tells you the pH. But the link is interesting – he’s sceptical about the badness of acidification (but is happy to call it that), and he seems familiar with the chemistry. He says:
“DIC and TA are “conservative quantities” – They are unaffected by pressure and temperature. The ratio of TA:DIC is a very robust measure os the alkalinity/acidity of seawater.”
Well put. It’s what I’ve been saying. SeaFETS are increasingly popular commercial devices – they tell you something useful, and need no lab analysis. But there is a lot of other information that can be used.
CRS, DrPH says:
September 25, 2013 at 11:40 am
“Oh noes! Now we have “ocean acidification refugees!!” http://www.chinookobserver.com/free/ocean-acidification-refugees-move-to-hawaii/article_93fc713a-bdc2-58e4-88c3-477f344c86f1.html
”
Article talks about the “corrosive waters” from the deep. It’s a pity they don’t mention the actual pH. If it’s “acidifiying” i.e. pH going down towards 7 it becomes LESS corrosive.
We will have much fun with journalists when they continue to write like that. Good thing is, before they actually learn anything they give up frustrated and become compensated commenters in the pay of a warmist foundation.
Nick Stokes says:
September 25, 2013 at 1:52 pm
“Well put. It’s what I’ve been saying. SeaFETS are increasingly popular commercial devices – they tell you something useful, and need no lab analysis. But there is a lot of other information that can be used.”
So you’re saying the X-Prize makes no sense because it has already been invented?
Re Sabertooth says: September 25, 2013 at 11:43 am
The pH ceiling of 8.3 is explained in Emerson & Hedges Chemical Oceanography, which also explains a pH floor of 7.6, also alkaline:
http://courses.washington.edu/pcc588/readings/EH_IV_CarbSys.pdf
This reference also includes borate buffering in addition to the carbonate and bicarbonate buffering that are customarily used to describe seawater buffering.
According to Frankignoulle (1994):
http://www.co2.ulg.ac.be/pub/frankignoulle_1994.pdf
borate buffering accounts for 30% of the global buffering effect in seawater.
DirkH says: September 25, 2013 at 1:56 pm
“So you’re saying the X-Prize makes no sense because it has already been invented?”
I don’t have a view on the value of the X-Prize. But SeaFETs were a breakthrough be cause they reduce the need for frequent calibration. You can run them for months, but not years. An ARGO might need more. And I’m sure their accuracy is not beyond improvement.
Nick Stokes:
Your obfuscations are getting tiresome. But, as the post from Kev-in-Uk (at September 25, 2013 at 1:11 pm) shows, they are not misleading everybody.
However, they may be misleading some, so I will answer your point at September 25, 2013 at 1:52 pm and leave it at that.
Lab. analyses are needed to make pH readings meaningful whether or not the pH reading is in situ or conducted on a sample in a lab.. This is because the pH measurements are meaningless on their own. The pH measurements need to be taken in conjunction with other measurements (i.e. DIC and/or total alkalinity) conducted on water samples in a lab.. Indeed, your first post
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/09/25/ipcc-on-acid-if-they-are-virtually-certain-about-ocean-acidification-why-does-x-prize-offer-a-reward-for-designing-a-proper-ocean-ph-meter/#comment-1426472
admitted this when it said
It is a trivial matter to obtain the pH of the sample when conducting the other lab. measurements. And, as I said, you are wrong when you say continuous monitoring of pH would remove the need for lab, measurements. It would NOT remove the need for the other measurements, and the trivial measurement procedure to determine pH of analysed samples would be a proper additional measurement for assessment of the calibration of the in situ pH monitor.
So, as I said, the advantage of continuous pH monitoring would be to enable interpolation between sample times. However, such interpolation may be very misleading for the reasons clearly explained in the link provided by Phil; i.e.
http://debunkhouse.wordpress.com/2011/02/17/chicken-little-of-the-sea-visits-station-aloha/
And that is all I have to say on the matter.
Richard
London 247 wrote: “…I will not dispute the right to use it as long as there is the following comment by Gail Coombs is also included….”
I hope you’re aware that titles can’t be copyrighted. Hence you couldn’t dispute his right to use it in any meaningful way.
OldWeirdHarold says:
September 25, 2013 at 12:37 pm
Is Richard Feely a real name?
It is a real name for a real person. Feely works at NOAA and has written several works on CO2 exchanges between the oceans and the atmosphere together with others:
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/pubs/outstand/feel2331/exchange.shtml
Further, Nick Stokes is right about the pH measurements: one can calculate the pH from other measurements: total alkalinity and DIC (dissolved inorganic carbon). But that are titrations which need lab conditions and time. That is in use on a few fixed stations (Bermuda, Hawaii and a few others) and on regular research ship cruises. Here the results for Bermuda (Fig. 5):
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/pubs/outstand/feel2331/exchange.shtml
Of course, that is only from a few fixed stations and some regular cruises over the past decades. Thus there is a lack of coverage.
The X-prize is for who can invent a continuous pH measurement which can be installed on commercial vessels without any maintenance during months. Similar equipment is already used for continuous measurements of pCO2 on board of commercial ships and their own platforms.
The first results above Iceland can be seen on-line:
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/co2/story/Iceland
Ferdinand Engelbeen:
It is good to have your contribution to this thread. I write to comment on one point you make in your post at September 25, 2013 at 2:31 pm.
You say
The Iceland example you provide is not of ship-board monitoring but of pH monitoring from a fixed buoy.
Ships move so monitoring from them provides yet another variable to be included in the assumptions required to interpret ocean pH variations.
Richard
@ur momisuglyKev-in-Uk on September 25, 2013 at 1:11 pm:
There is no global database of pH variability in the oceans. Dore et al. (2009) uses data from station ALOHA to document a “decreasing trend” of pH, “which is indistinguishable from the rate of acidification expected (emph. added) from equilibration with the atmosphere.”
From:
Dore et al. (2009) Physical and biogeochemical modulation of ocean acidification in the central North Pacific. PNAS July 28, 2009 vol. 106 no. 30:12235–12240
From (Reference 9 in quote above):
9. Takahashi T, et al. (2009) Climatological mean and decadal change in surface ocean pCO2, and net sea-air CO2 flux over the global oceans. Deep-Sea Res II 56:554–577.
In short, the available data for the partial pressure of CO2 (pCO2) is very sparse and consists mostly of data collected from ocean cruises (available here). There is virtually no data collected at stationary calibrated stations that cover multi-year periods. pH data is even sparser. Ocean acidification projections are sort of like trying to predict temperature in the future from data collected during airplane flights. It is almost guaranteed that no data is collected from the same place twice.
Furthermore, biological influences can have large impacts on CO2 dissolution/out-gassing and on pH:
Look at the facts. Earth is a warm, wet, greenhouse planet. There has been ice on its surface for less than 20% of its history, and in the geological past there have been six great ice ages. Two ice ages were characterized by ice at the Equator, with sea levels rising by up to 5,000ft.
Five of the ice ages saw a far higher atmospheric carbon dioxide content than at present. So carbon dioxide could not have caused past climate changes. Indeed, early Earth had 1,000 times more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than now – yet there was no runaway “greenhouse effect”, “tipping points” or “acid oceans”. The only “tipping point” we are suffering is the public’s trust in scientists.
The initial source of the two main greenhouse gases, water vapor and carbon dioxide, was volcanoes. Water vapor is still the main greenhouse gas. Once oceans formed and life appeared, carbon was then recycled between the oceans, atmosphere, soils, life and rocks. Carbon dioxide is a plant food, not a pollutant.
Human activity produces only 3% of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions each year. Carbon dioxide has a short life in the atmosphere and is absorbed by natural processes that have been taking place for billions of years.
At the normal past rates of absorption, even if we burned all fossil fuels on Earth, the atmospheric carbon dioxide content would not double. In past ages it has been naturally absorbed into everything from limestone reefs to soil, rocks and living things. For example, limestone is a very common rock and contains 44% carbon dioxide.
Dissolving carbon dioxide in ocean water has not created ocean acidity. The constant chemical reactions between ocean water and sediments and rocks on the sea floor have kept the oceans alkaline. When we run out of rocks on the sea floor, then the oceans might become acid — in about 100,000 years.
Why is this story contrary to what we hear? Because sensationalism is so much more lucrative. A climate catastrophe was provided for an anxious public by scientists who had everything to gain by frightening us. They put forward an ideology that is blind fundamentalism, unrelated to scientific facts. Politicians build new bureaucracies and pose as environmental saviors without having to face the consequences of their actions. Heads must roll. Meanwhile, the planet will keep changing as it has always done — humans or no humans.
[Sea levels falling by 5000 ft (during the ice ages)? Mod]
It’s a good thing:
http://joannenova.com.au/2011/09/ocean-acidification-a-little-bit-less-alkalinity-could-be-a-good-thing/
Aphan says:
September 25, 2013 at 12:57 pm
The problem with any natural cause of the increase in the atmosphere is that if must mimic the human emissions increase over time in a perfect ratio. Further, if undersea volcanoes are the cause of the increase, the oceans should be a huge source of CO2, but where then are the compensating sinks? The net result of all CO2 fluxes is an increase in the atmosphere of only halve the human emissions in quantity. And vegetation is a proven sink but only for 1 GtC/yr while humans add 8 GtC/yr.
AND the CO2 signature from “burning fossil fuels” is IDENTICAL to the fingerprint of CO2 that comes from burning magma in the oceans.
That is certainly not true: subduction volcanoes have a δ13C range of 0 to +4 per mil, deep magma volcanoes have a δ13C range of -4 to 0 per mil. The lowest value I have seen was -7 per mil, still above the -8 per mil currently in the atmosphere. Fossil fuels mixed release is at -24 per mil. More volcanic releases thus should increase the δ13C, while we see a firm decrease as well as in the atmosphere as in the ocean surfaces.
Moreover the deep oceans are at 0-1 per mil, where most of the deep magma CO2 would dissolve.
[units for sigma CO2 per 1000 ? Mod]
Sasha says:
September 25, 2013 at 2:48 pm
Human activity produces only 3% of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions each year. Carbon dioxide has a short life in the atmosphere and is absorbed by natural processes that have been taking place for billions of years.
The first point is a non-argument: human activity only caused 1.5% of the world’s carbon dioxide sinks each year. The difference is what remains in the atmosphere. The rest is only cycling…
The second point is not relevant: the residence time is short, around 5 years, but that has nothing to do with how long an extra amount of CO2 (whatever the source) above the dynamic equilibrium remains in the atmosphere. Besides a small amount absorbed by the ocean surface, the rest (deep oceans, vegetation) needs more time: about 40 years half life time. Other processes like carbonate precipitation and rock weathering are even much slower…
Which doesn’t mean that the extra CO2 is a big problem in the atmosphere or the oceans. The earth has seen much higher levels at the moment that the reefs were growing and the thick calcite layers were disposed…
[Sea levels falling by 5000 ft (during the ice ages)? Mod]
Let’s just say it was an enormous fall in sea levels.
[Sea levels falling by 5000 ft (during the ice ages)? Mod]
On reflection, sea levels have risen and fallen by massive amounts before humans even existed, just like CO2 levels.