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.
“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”,
The link to the “recent study” is not working. The required PH to dissolve calicium carbonate shells was that also found in this “recent study”? If not maybe an alternative explanation should have been put forward.
Claiming the Bering Sea is the most acidic place on Earth is an opening falsehood for starters.
Why cliamte obsessed people resort to lying about the state of the climate and data itself is starting to be annoying. Far too many so-called scientists deliberately deceive people by choosing scary or inflammatory labels for their work…if not outright deceptive.
Oh, yeah:
The Bering Sea is one of the richest places on Earth for shellfish. I guess we can thank this study’s authors for proving that sea life is not particularly sensitive to fluctuations. And looking at the map, it seems that wherever water is cold or a place is subject to upwellings of cold water, the pH drops. Chemistry 101 tells us why: Cold water can hold more CO2. The Bering Sea is pretty cold and isolated.
How much of this study was based on actual measurements, by the way?
How much is designed to simply scare a willingly gullible group of politicians and journalists?
It’s been said that ocean acidification is the last refuge of the scoundrel.
How very true.
Chris
I found these charts to be quite enlightening:
The Carbon Cycle: a geologist’s view
http://www.euanmearns.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/pH-TCO2.png
http://www.euanmearns.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/pacific_ocean_pH.png
One needs to compare this natural variance in pH with the scale on Anthony’s map up top.
Anthony, please note that these purple colours up by the Aleutians are “the far end of the Gulf Stream” where naturally acid deep waters up well. They are naturally acid because of Gts of rotting plankton at depth. There is also upwelling in the Indian Ocean which is where the dark blue comes from.
The aragonite compensation depth in the Pacific is much more shallow than in the Atlantic.
I am also wary of using “30%” more acid since in my book it is not possible to go beyond 100%.
there is an english version of that website – have a look at the bottom of the page :
http://www.manicore.com/
I thought precipitation of calcium carbonate (CaCO3) would arrest any pH changes from increased CO2(aq) since CaCO3 is a powerful pH buffer and exists in state of equilibrium with CO2(aq) meaning any increase in CO2(aq) would force a corresponding increase in CaCO3 and hence arrest any pH change.
PS: Is Jo Nova’s blog offline? Can’t load-up the page.
Jo’s site loaded for me…
——————
AFAICS, there isn’t enough C on planet Earth to turn the oceans acidic. I’m often wrong, so in case of calculation errors, we might have to demand that the government bans or taxes C.
/s
No – you’re right, there isn’t enough C. If all the CO2 in the atmosphere suddenly dissolved in the ocean it would increase the ocean CO2 content by ~1 ppm.
Meio neutro 25ºC
[H+] = [OH–] = 1,0 x 10-7 mol/L
pH = 7
pOH = 7
============
Meio neutro 45ºC
[H+] = [OH–] = 2,0 x 10-7 mol/L
pH = – log 2,0 x 10-7 = 6,7
pOH = – log 2,0 x 10-7 = 6,7
““We have established a global standard for future changes to be measured””
Translation from Climatologese into English:
‘These are the measurements any deviation from which will be considered both alarming and fraught with danger.’
You know, just like Dobson’s original magical 110 unit ozone measurement.
Bogus conclusions not supported by reasonable plausible mechanism. Consider the tiny fraction of atmospheric CO2 that is added by human activity. Consider that CO2 is but a tiny fraction of all atmospheric molecules. Consider the vastness of the oceans. There is no way that tiny human sourced fraction of total CO2 can be changing oceans. It is more likely that this increase corresponds better to the greening of the Earth.
Idiots.
Nicely summarized Pamela. WUWT doesn’t need more justification to grant a scientific Darwin/raspberry award for this well deserving ocean acidification scare.
Pamela,
Human emissions are 3% of total emissions, natural releases are 97%. Natural sinks are 98.5% of the total emissions, thus giving an increase of 1.5% of total emissions in the atmosphere, entirely caused by humans.
The increase in the atmosphere is currently 110 ppmv above the dynamic equilibrium for the current temperature. That pushes more CO2 into the oceans, no matter if that is a tiny fraction of the atmosphere: it is way above what Henry’s law shows for CO2 and seawater.
The vastness of the deep oceans doesn’t play a role in short time: the exchange with the deep oceans is slow. Only the ocean surface matters and that shows a small, but steady decline of pH in ratio to the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere. That is what the measurements say and that can be explained by a very plausible mechanism: the solubility of CO2 under increased atmospheric partial pressure and the chemistry of ocean waters…
I’ve read most of this thread and seen a lot of huffing and puffing about acidification and alarmist shenanigans and this and that, but where are the skeptic oceanographers? By “oceanographer,” I don’t mean someone who conducts research in a field closely related to the world’s oceans (such as atmospheric physics or meteorology), I mean someone whose specific field of study is the world’s oceans.
The Ocean Sciences division of the American Geophysical Union claims ~6,600 members as of 2014; the Department of Labor estimates 31,000 oceanographers currently researching in the United States. No idea how many actively researching oceanographers we have on the planet; presumably the global tally is upwards of 100,000.
Anyway, I’m not here to defend/dispute the 97% consensus, but 97% of 31,000 is 930. Yet I don’t know of anyone on the NIPCC or elsewhere whose focus of active research is the world’s oceans.
With tens of thousands of oceanographers worldwide, there should be at least hundreds (thousands, more realistically) who dispute AGW and/or dispute these claims of acidification. Where are they?
DW, the main problem is that many here do refute AGW (which indeed is at least largely overblown) but also everything that is remotely supporting some part of AGW or can be interpreted as support for AGW.
You can see that in the fierce discussions about the origin of the CO2 increase. Because that is one of the pillars of AGW, the origin can’t be human, even if all evidence points to humans as the main source…
The same for this pH discussion. While the wording of the press release is clearly written by some alarmist spin doctor, that doesn’t imply that the findings themselves are wrong and that humans can’t be blamed for the (very small) decline in pH. While humans are (near) fully responsible for the 30% rise of CO2 in the atmosphere, which is 110 ppmv above the dynamic equilibrium for the current temperature… If that doesn’t push more CO2 into the oceans, nothing can. And if more CO2 is pushed into the oceans, that lowers the pH.
If that will have negative consequences is an entirely different question. The past did show much higher CO2 levels with abundant sea life, including corals and coccoliths…
All what happens from these discussions is that rejecting sound science does fire back on the better arguments that skeptics have: the discussion about the real impact of a CO2 doubling in light of the long lasting “pause”…
“The past did show much higher CO2 levels with abundant sea life, including corals and coccoliths…”
I agree with much of what you wrote, but this sentence I quoted is not relevant. The issue is also the rate of the increase in CO2 concentration…Chemical processes work to shift the ocean pH back to being more basic even as CO2 levels stay high; the problem is that the time scale for these processes is slow compared to the time scale at which we are currently increasing the pH.
In truth the support for the statement that increased CO2 in the oceans is beneficial, likely has better scientific support then the declared harms.
Joel, according to recent research, the pH during the Cretaceous was a half to 1 unit lower with CO2 levels a lot higher in the atmosphere. Coccoliths have many generations per year and seems to adapt very rapidly to changing pH. Corals even can handle changes of 1 pH unit within a day as they are growing often near river estuaries… Thus even if the pH drop accelerates (until now 0.1 unit over 160 years), I don’t see a real problem.
I appreciate your response but am obligated to note that (in my opinion) it in no way addresses my original question.
By the way (to anyone reading this), how about a glaciologist? One glaciologist whose research indicates that anthropogenic climate change is either not happening or is not a concern. Thousands of them as well; seeking one (1).
DW, That is two different questions:
1) Can I name a glaciologist whose research indicates that anthropogenic climate change is not happening?
Answer: No.
Climate Change is happening. It always has and it always will. relevant to your example is the case of ice ages. That was when the glaciers formed. As we are not in an ice age glaciologists often notice that glaciers don’t cover most of the planet.
2) Can I name a glaciologist whose research indicates that his research is not of concern and so not important?
Answer: No.
Any researcher who finds his research is not important loses funding and so ceases to be a researcher. that applies to glaciologists as well as everyone else. By definition, no glaciologist can stay being a glaciologist and say that their research is not of concern – other glaciologists whose research is of concern will get the funding instead and thus they will cease to be a glaciologist.
However, it has been shown that the IPCC needed to use a Greenpeace activist’s article for a mountaineering magazine as evidence of glaciers actually being of concern… so it is fair to say that there isn’t a lot of evidence that your questions or my answers are very relevant.
one way keeps the gravy flowing , the other way cuts it off , one way gets you status and the support of willing press , the other loses you status, one way suites the politicians one way means you get in the neck f from politicians, one way gets you the adoration of the greens one way makes you the target of their hate , you decide which way to take.
I appreciate the response, but it is difficult to interpret this as anything but a roundabout implication that pretty much every one of the tens of thousands of oceanographers in the U.S. (let alone worldwide) are at some level either actively or passively committing academic fraud by choosing to remain silent on the falsehoods clearly and unequivocally supported by every established organization of oceanographers on the planet.
This comment has sat here for two days as comments have continued to post, yet (evidently) not one reader of this thread can name _even_ _one_ oceanographer who disputes the official position of our oceanographic authorities on either acidification or the scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change. Personally, I’d want to see thousands before accepting that there is any dispute over either topic, but I’d settle for hundreds. Even a couple dozen. Yet…not even one.
That doesn’t seem odd to anyone reading this? There is clearly no shortage of intelligent folks here; can any of you understand how outlandish it would be to accept your completely anecdotal rebuttal without the barest shred of proof*?
*No, six-year-old stolen emails do not constitute proof of global conspiracy by even the most generous definition.
Mr. Takahashi and the rest of the “team of scientist” on this report need to have all their college credits erased and sent back to junior high. The range 7.74–8.4 is alkaline.
The words “acid”, “acidification”, “acidity” should never appear in this report and that they use them means either they do not know basic science or are liars for money.
It’s not WHAT you tell the masses to gain their trust, it’s HOW you tell the story.
I go for liars for money , grant cheques in this case , although they could be true believers that consider facts comes second to impact when your doing ‘research’
Looks to me like where it is very cold, and wet, the CO2 is stripped from the air ( via a cold water stripper aka rain and snow) and where the ocean is hot, the CO2 outgasses. Not seeing much human involvement in that distribution…
There have been times in the past when atmospheric CO2 was much higher than now. Is there any evidence at all that molluscs or corals suffered mass extinctions at those times? If not, there would seem to be no basis for this obsession with ocean pH.
As I just explained up here, http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/11/10/claim-new-global-maps-detail-human-caused-ocean-acidification/#comment-1785955 , it is more complicated than you are supposing: There is not a direct correspondence between the ocean pH and the atmospheric CO2 concentration. It depends on the rate of change of the atmospheric CO2 concentration because there are processes in the ocean that bring it back to its slightly alkaline state even in the presence of higher atmospheric CO2 concentrations but those processes take time to occur and we are changing the CO2 concentration very rapidly (relative to the time scales for these other processes).
joeldshore,
” it is more complicated than you are supposing”
Who are you replying to?
“There is not a direct correspondence between the ocean pH and the atmospheric CO2 concentration”
Are you alluding to buffering? Please tell us more! Can you quantify, in rough terms, what the “time scales for these other processes” are? I am noting the plural here!
(Quoting)
“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”
– Just another dubious claim that nothing like this has ever possibly happened naturally, besides, characters that claim to be this learned should know that correlation is not proof of causation.
This quote from the article should be considered closely:
“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.”
If one actually reads the map in the article, not square meter of the world’s oceans are acidic. Nor are they becoming “more acidic”. At most there are regions in the oceans where pH varies down more than others. It is notable that the study authors punt when it ocmes tot he equatorial waters, where pH variance is well known. Perhaps what we are seeing a nice bit of cherry picking? Someone with academic creds needs to point this out to the editors of the publication.
Horse latitudes, higher pH, tropics and upper latitudes, lower pH. Horse latitudes, deserts and less inflow of fresh water and the water that does flow in tends not to be “sweetwater” (e.g. is alkaline). Other places have good inflows of sweetwater. To boot, that sweetwater has run off from well forested areas and we know what that does to pH. QED.
Question;
Asking from ignorance as a newby, is CO2 the only influence on pH in the oceans? Do the many tons of garbage man dumps and/or freshwater & melting inputs have any influence? Or volcanic activity?
TIA for any info.
When I look at the ratio of CO2 in the atmosphere to the other components, I find it difficult to imagine that there would be that much effect from the increases; a common mans common sense.
Strikes me that this might be a display of “conclusion jumping” similar to the (mis)conception that CO2 is the main driver of climate.
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/001181.htm
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/001183.htm
Which one sounds like the more “alarming” condition?
Recalling that blood pH is normally regulated between 7.35 and 7.45, is it or is it not accurate to say that almost all of us suffer from chronic Alkalosis?
Brandon,
It is not accurate. It is silly.
Please, come over to the Light. You will receive a button; “I survived acid/base terminology trauma.”
You will attract a better class of friend and will enjoy life more.
I dunno. The last time I conceded that calling it “ocean debasicification” was acceptable terminology, someone else came along and chewed my butt by saying, “yeah, but you had to be called on it first you dishonest git” or some such. So I’ve filed it under the same class of non-arguments as carping about “back radiation” and take no prisoners.
Fixed the “recent study” link: http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/public/pmel/publications-search/search_abstract.php?fmContributionNum=4033
A little platitude from Wikipedia:
“Most limestone is composed of skeletal fragments of marine organisms such as coral or foraminifera”
Given the fact that huge amounts of limestone were produced in the jurassic and cretaceous age when the CO2 concentration of the atmosphere was 4 to 5 times higher than today, how can anybody claim that corals and foraminifera are in danger owing to the rather small increase of atmospheric CO2 in the last decades ???
By totally ignoring the fact, or by explaining it away (to themselves or to others) using ultra technical babble-speak to justify saying ‘well *this* time it’s different’ …which doesn’t help in the long run anyway because there will be someone who knows more about the subject matter to call ‘ultra technical BS’ which drives them even madder in their cognitive dissonance.
Try going back to the Cambrian when CO2 levels were ~4,500 ppmv.
Here’s a very rough outline. Raindrops absorb CO2 from the atmosphere. Water runs across carbonate rocks, eroding them and picking up minerals in solution and as sediment. Rivers flow into the oceans. Ocean surface water evaporates leaving behind heavy mineral ions. Process repeats until carbonates become saturated, at which point additional carbonate precipitates out of solution and falls to the bottom. Net result: a buffered ocean with a stable slightly basic pH and a drawdown of atmospheric CO2 which is now sequestered in solution or on the seafloor. Plate tectonics move deep ocean sediments back into the mantle. Atmospheric CO2 stabilizes at the point that volcanism reintroduces carbon at the same rate that rainfall and direct ocean absorption sequester it. I’ve completely left biological processes out of this in some faint hope of brevity.
A full geologic carbon cycle takes slightly longer than a few decades, something which has been known to textbooks since the 1950s, and was first proposed in literature sometime in the 19th century.
(Quoting)
“acidifying at the rate of 5 percent per decade”
Another question from the dummy; How much is 1% of a pH value? is it in ppm of alkalinity or what? why don’t they quit the doublespeak and quantify the change in pH?
pH is a logarithmic scale. To talk about % changes in a logarithmic scale is a scientific and mathematical abomination. In chemistry, this treatment of the pH scale a big red flag for an ignoramus or a liar.
By their words yea shall know them.
Verily!
I thanketh you
He has measured the global ocean pH from a single boat? Yeahhh… right. And if the global pH ‘measurements’ in the first figure were even near believable they would cause serious embarrassment to the carbon cycle models. I posit “bollox”.
I could maybe find minute differences in the pH of the Mississippi river and create a cash cow by dreaming up a relationship to CO2 “pollution”. At least until the damn Chinese carp jump into the boat and slap the meter overboard…
There were a few more measurements done:
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/oceans/LDEO_Underway_Database/
and specific for pH data:
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/oceans/ndp_094/ndp094.html
It would be interesting to see an overall comparison of pH values and net primary productivity by oceanic region. Some of the best fishing grounds are in low pH areas. Needs work.