In northern winter, the Bering Sea, dividing Alaska and Siberia, becomes the most acidic region on earth (in purple) as shown in this February 2005 acidity map in pH scale. Temperate oceans are less acidic. The equatorial Pacific is left blank due to its high variability around El Niño and La Niña events. (Takahashi)A team of scientists has published the most comprehensive picture yet of how acidity levels vary across the world’s oceans, providing a benchmark for years to come as enormous amounts of human-caused carbon emissions continue to wind up at sea.
“We have established a global standard for future changes to be measured,” said Taro Takahashi, a geochemist at Columbia’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory who published the maps with his colleagues in the August issue of the journal Marine Chemistry. The maps provide a monthly look at how ocean acidity rises and falls by season and geographic location, along with saturation levels of calcium carbonate minerals used by shell-building organisms. The maps use 2005 as a reference year and draw on four decades of measurements by Lamont-Doherty scientists and others.The oceans have taken up a quarter of the carbon dioxide humans have put in the atmosphere over the last two hundred years.
But their help in offsetting global warming has come at a price: the oceans are growing more acidic as they absorb our excess CO2. To what extent ocean acidification may harm marine life and ecosystems is still unclear, but already signs of stress have appeared in corals, mollusks and other shell-builders living in regions with naturally more acidic water. Since the industrial era began, average surface seawater pH in temperate oceans has fallen from 8.2 to 8.1 by 0.1 pH unit, equal to a 30 percent increase in acid concentration. (A lower pH indicates more acidic conditions.)The saturation state of the mineral aragonite, essential to shell-builders, tends to fall as waters become more acidic. The South Pacific Ocean is heavily oversaturated with respect to aragonite (in red) while the polar oceans (in blue) are less saturated, as shown in this February 2005 map. The pink lines represent approximate polar sea ice edges. (Takahashi)
Taro Takahashi has spent more than four decades measuring the changing chemistry of the world’s oceans. Here, aboard the R/V Melville, he celebrates after sampling waters near the bottom of the Japan Trench in 1973. (Lamont-Doherty archives)The vast tropical and temperate oceans, where most coral reefs grow, see the least variation, with pH hovering between 8.05 and 8.15 as temperatures fluctuate in winter and summer. Here, the waters are oversaturated with respect to the mineral aragonite—a substance that shell-building organisms need to thrive.Ocean pH fluctuates most in the colder waters off Siberia and Alaska, the Pacific Northwest and Antarctica. In spring and summer, massive plankton blooms absorb carbon dioxide in the water, raising pH and causing seawater acidity to fall. In winter, the upwelling of CO2-rich water from the deep ocean causes surface waters to become more acidic. Acidification of the Arctic Ocean in winter causes aragonite levels to fall, slowing the growth of pteropods, planktic snails that feed many predator fish. The maps reveal that the northern Indian Ocean is at least 10 percent more acidic than the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, which could be due to its unique geography. Cut off from the Arctic Ocean, the chemistry of the northern Indian Ocean is influenced by rivers draining the massive Eurasian continent as well as seasonal monsoon rains.By analyzing long-term data collected off Iceland, Bermuda, the Canary Islands, Hawaii and the Drake Passage, off the southern tip of South America,
Takahashi finds that waters as far north as Iceland and as far south as Antarctica are acidifying at the rate of 5 percent per decade. His estimate corresponds to the amount of CO2 humans are adding to the atmosphere, and is consistent with several recent estimates, including a 2014 study in the journal Oceanography led by Nicholas Bates, research director at the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences.“This is exactly what we’d expect based on how much CO2 we’ve been putting in the air,” said Rik Wanninkhof, a Miami-based oceanographer with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) who was not involved in the study. “This is an important point for scientists to underscore—these calculations are not magic.”If the current pace of ocean acidification continues, warm-water corals by 2050 could be living in waters 25 percent more acidic than they are today, said Takahashi.
While corals can currently tolerate shifts that big, marine biologists wonder if they can sustain growth at lower pH levels year-round. “In the long run it is the average pH that corals see that matters to their ability to grow and build a coral reef,” said Chris Langdon, a marine biologist at the University of Miami, who was not involved in the study.<Ocean acidification is already having an impact, especially in places where the seasonal upwelling of deep water has made seawater naturally more acidic. In a recent study by researchers at NOAA, more than half of the pteropods sampled off the coast of Washington, Oregon and California showed badly dissolved shells. Ocean acidification has been linked to fish losing their ability to sniff out predators, and the die-off of baby oysters in hatcheries off Washington and Oregon, where more acidic deep water comes to the surface each spring and summer.By 2100, ocean acidification could cost the global economy $3 trillion a year in lost revenue from fishing, tourism and intangible ecosystem services, according to a recent United Nations report.
The U.S. Government Accountability Office, the watchdog arm of Congress, has reached similar findings and recommended that President Obama create a research and monitoring program dedicated to ocean acidification.Other authors of the study: Stuart Sutherland, David Chipman (now retired), John Goddard and Cheng Ho, all of Lamont-Doherty; and Timothy Newberger, Colm Sweeney and David Munro, all of University of Colorado, Boulder.
Anyway, It is a great chance to have a certain measurement of the state of the ocean for further references. After 30 years we will see, if that can be connected to global warming, and how much the acidity / alcalinity has chanched.
As far as i know, all the calcium carbonate will fall down (as shells and exosketons) the bottom of the ocean, becoming lime stone. As it happened all the time before.
“As far as i know, all the calcium carbonate will fall down (as shells and exosketons) the bottom of the ocean, becoming lime stone. As it happened all the time before.”
Actually the traffic is going the other way in a large part of the ocean, and always has. Just google “Carbonate Compensation Depth”.
Does the paper below say something different, or is it a “climate vs. weather” type of thing?
“Here, we present a compilation of continuous, high-resolution time series of upper ocean pH, collected using autonomous sensors, over a variety of ecosystems ranging from polar to tropical, open-ocean to coastal, kelp forest to coral reef. These observations reveal a continuum of month-long pH variability with standard deviations from 0.004 to 0.277 and ranges spanning 0.024 to 1.430 pH units. The nature of the observed variability was also highly site-dependent, with characteristic diel, semi-diurnal, and stochastic patterns of varying amplitudes. These biome-specific pH signatures disclose current levels of exposure to both high and low dissolved CO2, often demonstrating that resident organisms are already experiencing pH regimes that are not predicted until 2100.
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0028983
This statement pretty much marks this paper as garbage.
Assume that the industrial era began in earnest in the early 18th century. So what they are saying is that someone back then took measurements of the pH of the world’s temperate oceans and came up with a pH of 8.2. This is quite amazing considering that the pH scale was not introduced until 1909 by the Danish chemist Søren Peder Lauritz Sørensen.
Given that until the development of the glass electrode the acidity of a solution was usually done by determining the colour of a piece of paper. The best you would come up with is a pH of 8, or more likely ‘more alkaline that fresh water.’
The other problem, as has already been pointed out is the term ‘more acidic.’ The paper and the meme would have far less punch if you used the correct term ‘less alkaline.’ People have a reasonable concept of acidic and would be more likely to associate this with something dangerous.
The pH was of course not measured in the past to such an accuracy, but it is over the past decades at a few stations (and lots of regular and occasional sea ship measurements), which shows the decline over time directly related to the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere. Taking into account the CO2 levels in the past and ocean chemistry, the past pH can be quantified.
In this case the “model” is a quite accurate reflection of the real world…
But I agree, while “more acidic” is strictly right (more H+), it is used to scare people…
The term “pH” and the concept is about 100 years old (S.P. L. Sorenson, Carlsberg, 1909.) Actually, 90 years from the refinement. I’d view any pH measurements from the 19th century with some suspicion.
If there’s been no “benchmark” of pH levels…er…excuse me…”acidity” levels vary, then what happens to all the past claims of Man-made CO2 dissolving clam shells?
Also, doesn’t this “benchmark” presuppose the cause? Shouldn’t a “benchmark” be the start rather than the conclusion?
Also, has climate science advanced to the point where it can extract human DNA from a CO2 molecule?
“doesn’t this “benchmark” presuppose the cause? Shouldn’t a “benchmark” be the start rather than the conclusion?”
That is an endemic problem with climate papers, they assume AGW as equally proven as the theory of relativity and then drive their conclusions based on that initial assumption. I have no idea how something so preposterous is repeated so consistently and become the SOP for climate papers.
The [separation] of man made CO2 and natural CO2 is a construct, an idea, it has no basis. As you DNA question points out, we have no idea. Pick a point in time when there was less CO2 in the atmosphere, simply state any additional CO2 in the atmosphere is man-made and there you go, the science is settled.
Those dissolving clam shells aren’t in the ocean – they were in tanks pumped with variable levels of co2 at unrealistic rates and levels. Some crustaceans built more shell!
Here is another experiment.
“Since the industrial era began, average surface seawater pH in temperate oceans has fallen from 8.2 to 8.1 by 0.1 pH unit,”
Ahh so, wayyyy back then (whenever) we could measure to 0.1 ph accuracy, and to 0.01 ph today. Me thinks that I should ask for the error bars & methodology as I’m sure that these are just more computer models/assumptions involved (aka climastrology). Also no doubt the “data” will be “adjusted” to make it look worse year by year. Appears to be just another IPCC/government grant gravy train.
Continuing your point about “since the industrial era began”, if this would infer that the Industrial Era began about 150 years ago, and the tone of the paper being that Man’s relentless CO2 emissions would carry on the decrease in alkalinity at the same rate. (0.1 decrease in pH units per 150 years). Would it not take 1650 years just to get to a neutral pH? Is there that amount of fossil fuel to burn for that period of time to create such a scenario?
Hum, even assuming this study is accurate, how much of the decline in alkalinity is due to man, if the atmosphere has been warming naturally for a very long time? Indeed, how do we know the upwelling is not bringing more CO2 then the mean? At any rate, as several posters linked articles to peer reviewed reports indicating CO2 is a net benefit, not only in the atmosphere, but in the oceans as well.
Maybe today’s technology is better? But, when I was a lab flunky in the ’80s, we hoped for reproducible results with accuracies of 0.1 to 0.2 of a pH unit at best. And that was with careful calibration several times a day and with special care for the fragile instrumentation in a controlled laboratory environment. I wonder about the uniformity of the test equipment, methodologies, training and calibration protocols used in this study? Not to mention the challenges presented at the various field test locations scattered across the vast expanse of the world’s oceans over a period of four decades? With all that in mind, It seems that it is a joke for them to claim to be able to make meaningful comparisons of pH measurements to within 0.01 or 0.02 of a unit!
How many shellfish are floating along the sea surface? This is just setting the stage for future alarmists to claim that the missing acidity has gone to the deep ocean, because we have no record to contradict them.
“The equatorial Pacific was left blank because if the high variability around El Nino and LA Nina events.”
######
Here is the clue to understanding this fraud.
It is the confession that sea surface pH varies according to factors_other_ than CO2.
Cherry picking comes to mind.
I always wanted to show my parents only my good grades from school, unfortunately I was not afforded the same opportunites at cherry picking as climate scientists have.
Areas of ocean upwelling are biologically rich. This is attributed to the upwelling water providing otherwise depleted ‘nutrients to surface waters.
It occurs to me that CO2 is perhaps the most important depleted nutrient, as evidenced by the high levels of chlorophyll in these waters.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upwelling#High_productivity
There is plenty of CO2 in all ocean waters, mostly in form of bicarbonates, that is not a limiting factor at all, contrary to their nephews on land…
That does not mean that more CO2 is not better, as several studies show.
“It occurs to me that CO2 is perhaps the most important depleted nutrient”
Give that man a prize!
If you could pick one gas to increase in the atmosphere in order to bestow the most benefits to life on this planet, which one would you choose?
How can the choice be anything other than CO2?
It feeds plants. Photosynthesis is no theory.
All animals eat plants or something that ate plants……so they benefit. In addition to more food/sugars produced via photosynthesis, the other product is oxygen.
Should water vapor(H2O gas) be increased also?
With the earth warming around 1 degree C since the Industrial Revolution, that has in fact happened. If you believe some people, that’s a bad thing.
To determine if it really is bad to increase water vapor, let’s think about what would happen if we decreased water vapor. That definitely would be bad.
However, unlike CO2, which is well mixed in the atmosphere, there is a huge range in the amount of atmospheric H2O. The places that don’t have much, don’t support much life. The places with an abundance of, have an abundance of life……….so yes, increasing H2O is overall a good thing.
But that will cause too much rain in places that already get more than enough rain!
OK then, it’s settled. The one gas to increase, that would bestow the most widespread benefits to life on this planet, with is CO2.
Note: This discussion does not give weight to speculative projections related to CO2 that have yet to materialize during a time frame that has already passed. In the world of meteorology, we call that a busted forecast. We learn and make a NEW forecast using updated guidance based on the LATEST observations.
Oh, that’s right, I forgot. Climate scientists can bust a forecast for 20 years and still get to call it accurate because a theory never has to verify and reconcile with the real world. You can always find new theories about missing heat or temporary pauses that explain why the old theory really is working.
But we are being told that things must stay exactly like they were 150 years ago before the start of the Industrial Revolution! Why?
Of the millions of years that life has existed on this planet, why does circa. 1850 represent the instant in time when all gases and temperatures of our atmosphere and oceans were at the perfect level? And we should compare all future levels to those perfect ones?
I just took a poll of all the creatures on this planet based on empirical data using measures like vegetative health and food production. Most of them say that’s bullshit and we should increase the one gas in the atmosphere that benefits life the most………CO2.
…aboard the R/V Melville
Tell me this is a joke.
“In northern winter, the Bering Sea, dividing Alaska and Siberia, becomes the most acidic region on earth.”
Translated: The most acidic region on earth, isn’t.
With due regard to the myriad issues that affect ocean pH, imho the figure would be better illustrated by indicating pH deviation from neutrality with respect to the mean temperature at each geographic point. For example, at 5 degrees Celcius, neutral pH is 7.4; at 10 degrees Celcius, neutral pH is about 7.3; whereas at 30 degrees Celcius, the value is 6.9 or so (values rounded to one decimal digit).
Put another way, were the oceans simply pure fresh water with no dissolved gases or ions, the pH profile would mimic the temperature profile.
Let’s put it in every day terms. Say we have an atmosphere that is 100 percent CO2, not like Venus — like a capped bottle of beer or champagne, where the booze has all the CO2 the bottler can squeeze in.
Warming the liquid (beer, etc.) in my experience will lower much dissolved CO2 your drink of choice can hold. That’s why the excess gas and beer sprays out. And it doesn’t matter where that gas came from — CO2, sulfuric acid, active yeast or commercial “dry” ice. The amount of CO2 the liquid can hold depends on temperature and pressure, and nothing else. Take the cap off that warm beer, to that point stable at high pressure under its blanket of gas in the neck, and the CO2 the beer/champagne/sparkling drink can no longer hold its gas like it could when it was cold, and it spritzes you in da puss.
How you gonna push that excess CO2 back into the water? Cold . . pressure. Cold oceans, more gas dissolved; warmer oceans less gas dissolved.
Warmists want it both ways, warm oceans (or beer) and more dissolved CO2, directly contradictory conditions.
To ocean acidification let’s give a resounding BURP!
Tom, in your enthusiasm for opening the beer/champagne you forgot you were in an atmosphere of 100% CO2.
Tom, there is a little difference between a bottle of beer and the oceans and atmosphere: CO2 in beer bottle easily can reach 3 atm pressure, while the atmosphere is at 0,0004 atm CO2 pressure. The ocean surface follows the atmosphere with an equilibrium pressure which is average 0.000007 atm lower than the CO2 pressure in the atmosphere.
What the difference in pressure between a beer bottle and the atmosphere/oceans compensates is the difference in surface area…
The influence of temperature on the equilibrium CO2 pressure is about 8 μatm/°C, that is all. The increase in the atmosphere meanwhile is 110 ppmv above the temperature controlled equilibrium. Humans have emitted over 200 ppmv in the past 160 years…
5% of what? pH is not a linear scale. What does a 5% per decade change in ‘acidity’ mean in terms of pH. Also the oceans are currently alkaline, so presumably the ‘acidity’ is negative. This makes measuring change in terms of a percentage per decade even more strange.
The fluctuation in pH in the ocean mirrors the seasonal changes in CO2 found in the atmosphere. In summer vegetation sucks CO2 from the air, while sea life similarly removes CO2 (carbonate) from the ocean raising the pH.
Hope this helps. Anything above 7 is alkaline. The ocean is not acidic:
http://sciencebasedpharmacy.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/ph_scale.gif
The maps show that no part of the oceans is in any way acidic. (Its very amateurish propaganda)
And no mention that ocean plant life is almost certainly using most of the extra CO2 they say is going into the oceans.
The fact is that all rain and all rivers that have flowed into the oceans over millions and millions of years have mostly been slightly acidic to not so slightly acidic (rivers have been measured as low as 5.6 pH )……..
…….. Yet the oceans remain subbornly ALKALINE !!!
Anyone who thinks a minor change in atmospheric CO2 is going to make one iota of difference, really needs their head examined. !
Headline: The Oceans Are NOT Acidic.
How did a paper like this pass peer review? Are there no true scientists left?
Can someone calculate what the concentration of CO2 would need to be in sea water to make the oceans acidic?
Remember that the Hockey Team has successfully redefined the peer review.
Hmmm…..I guess that means that sick people are more dead than well people, even those with sniffles.
Any paper that makes predictions out to the year 2100 should automatically fail peer review. Instead a recommendation should be made to the writer to make his paper a submission to science-fiction periodicals.
I am not even kidding. There is science fact in this paper, with some melo-drama, hypothesis and wild speculation, all which is good stuff for writing science-fiction.
Yeah. And monkeys might fly out of my butt.
Any fool can create a bogeyman, and then tell you what said bogeyman “might” do.
The article takes care to hide the fact that CaCO3 (calcite & aragonite) is more soluble in cooler water than warmer water, making it appear that pH is the only factor to consider in respect to solubilities. For some reason the article speaks of saturation instead of solubility. In actual fact, aragonite is the more soluble mineral of the two.
This is simply more contrived alarmism, trying to make it appear that the natural variations in ocean pH is due to anthropogenic CO2, and that solubility is not dependent on temperature. But lower pH is simply due to the upwelling of deeper water.
Note also the odd scaling on the pH graphic at the ends of the scale bar.
Note also the pH of tropical waters is lower than mid-latitude. This is doubtless due to upwelling of the equatorial currents which brings the deep waters (with pH as low as 7.6) to the surface. This lower pH is due to the settling of organic debris into deeper water, not to CO2.
The article stinks.
Add my vote: Utter rubish! 8.0 is ALKALINE….Chem 101.
People who think like this, need to find themselves on “The Island”…and then VOTED OFF. (Hopefully to float aimlessly in the middle of the ocean, NEVER making landfall.)
Warmists on acid. Explains everything.
Since there hasn’t been a global warming trend in 18+ years, and global temp trends will likely remain flat or falling for about another 20 years (because of: 30-yr PDO cool cycle started 2005, 30-yr AMO cool cycle starts 2020’s, weak solar cycles for at least another 15 years, etc.), the alarmists need to move the CAGW narrative away from global warming to ocean “acidification”.
There is currently about 38,500 GT of C (as H2CO3) dissolved in the oceans and roughly 780 GT of C (as CO2) in the atmosphere (total 39,200 GT). Because of Henry’s Gas Law, the ratio will roughly remain at around 50:1.
We know that for 100’s of millions of years, ocean and land life thrived when atmospheric CO2 levels were around 2,000ppm+, which calculates to roughly 192,500 GT of C (as H2CO3) in oceans and roughly 3,850 GT of C (as CO2) in the air for a total of 196,350 GT of C (50:1 ratio)…. We also know that even at 2,000ppm, oceans were STILL alkaline at around pH7.6…
Simple question… Since 1750, man has emitted roughly 2,000 GT of C (as CO2) in the air, which only accounts for 5% of total C (2,000 GT/39,200 GT), after burning through roughly 50% of known fossil fuel reserves….
Could some alarmist please explain to me where man is going to get another 157,070 GT of C, to bring atmospheric levels to 2,000ppm? And even if we could get to 2000ppm, oceans would STILL be alkaline at pH7.6….
What am I missing?
What you are missing is the mixing speed between atmosphere and deep oceans. The ocean surface (~1000 GtC) and the atmosphere (~800 GtC) are mixing quite rapidly, but the deep oceans need a lot more time. Of the ~9 GtC/year emissions some 1 GtC/year is going into vegetation, 0.5 GtC/year in the ocean surface and ~3 GtC/year in the deep oceans, the rest accumulates in the atmosphere.
The overall decay rate of the extra CO2 above equilibrium is about 40 years half life time, thus it takes time to get most of the extra CO2 into the deep, even if humans should stop all emissions today…
If the continuous increase will have much effect on temperatures and pH remains to be seen…
“If the continuous increase will have much effect on temperatures and pH remains to be seen…”
My understanding is that it’s already been seen to not have an impact…notably over the past 18+ years.
So in other words, according to that hypothesis that the atmospheric CO2-concnetration rises mainly due to anthropogenic production, about 50% of what was produced in the 90ties and about 30% what was produced in in the 00th is gone into equilibrium (mainly the deep oceans) and not the amount, but the rate of CO2 production determines the CO2-amount in the atmosphere => if we would keep the CO2-production constant, within 40years (your number, not mine) the concentration would become constant.
If they are claiming that we are warming, then their claim that the oceans are absorbing more CO2 is simply bogus. Furthermore, their assumption that CO2 can acidify the complex buffer system called seawater is just junk science. Also at the temperatures of seawater, so wide and variable, the pH scale varies with temperature. At Arctic temperatures, the pH scale is 0–15, with 7.5 being neutrality. The lack of obvious adjustment for this disparity throws this who issue out the window.
Also, warm water enhances CaCO3 deposition, so more warm water means more deposition. In addition, organisms thoroughly enjoy having more carbonate and have the physiological power to continue their processes despite a slight increase in CO2. As CO2 had been many time higher than now during the vast majority (>90%) of the last 600 million years, it is just stupid to pretend that today’s increases bother any organism in a negative way.