Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Following up on my previous investigations into the oceanic pH dataset, I’ve taken a deeper look at what the 2.5 million pH data points from the oceanographic data can tell us. Let me start with an overview of oceanic pH (the measure of alkalinity/acidity, with neutral being a pH of 7.0). Many people think that the ocean has only one pH everywhere. Other people think that the oceanic pH is different in different places, but is constant over time. Neither view is correct.
First, here is a view of a transect of the north Pacific ocean from Alaska to Hawaii, with Hawaii on the top left, Alaska on the top right, and depths shown vertically. ocean ph along transect
Figure 1. Variation in pH by latitude and depth. The graphic is taken from a previous post of mine regarding oceanic pH.
Note that in Hawaii, the surface pH is above 8.05, and in Alaska the surface pH is below 7.7 … and despite that, the marine environment in Alaska is much, much richer in life than the Hawaiian marine environment. This underscores a simple fact—alkalinity is hard on living creatures, much harder than acidity. For example, if you want to dissolve the victim of your latest murder spree, you’d use lye (a strong alkali) and not sulfuric acid (a strong acid). [Well, maybe not you, but your neighbor about whom everyone always said “He always seemed like such a nice man …]
Now, neutral on the pH scale is 7. In line with our bodies’ poor tolerance of alkalinity I just mentioned, we often eat things like lemon juice, which has a pH of around two, which is neutral minus five pH units … whereas the most alkaline foods that we can tolerate have a pH of around eight, which is only one pH unit above neutral.
That’s why fish often have a slimy kind of mucus that covers their entire bodies … to keep from slowly dissolving in the slightly alkaline ocean. And it’s also why a slight trend towards neutrality in the ocean is not worrisome in the slightest.
Having seen the spatial changes in pH from Hawaii to Alaska, Figure 2 shows the temporal changes in oceanic pH in a variety of other marine environments.
Figure 2. pH in different marine environments. DATA SOURCE: PLOS
Figure 2 shows not only the mean pH in these environments, it shows the variation in each environment over time. Note that while the open ocean shows a narrow pH range, a number of marine environments show a wide range over time. Coral reefs and kelp forests, for example, show a large variation in pH, which can be as large as a full pH unit in a single month. To quote from the underlying source for Figure 2:
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.
So we’re already experiencing what is supposed to terrify us, the so-called “acidification” of the ocean that is predicted for the year 2100.
For a real-world view of what that difference in variation means over time, Figure 3 shows the data from the Hawaii Ocean Timeseries (HOT) project, and the data from the Monterey Bay coastline.
Figure 3. Surface pH measurements from HOT open ocean and Monterey Bay upwelling coastline. The Hawaii data shows both measured pH (black) and pH calculated from other measurements, e.g. dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC), total alkalinity, and salinity.
As you can see, it’s nothing for any one of the thousands of different species living offshore from me to go through a large rapid swing in pH. It doesn’t seem to bother them in the slightest, they’ve been doing it for millions of years. Not only that, but as you can see from the Hawaii data, the slow drop in alkalinity is gradually moving the ocean towards a more neutral condition, which living organisms don’t seem to mind.
All of which is why I say that the gradual neutralization of the ocean from increasing CO2 is meaningless. It’s also why I say that calling the process “acidification” is merely an attempt to increase alarm. What’s happening is gradual neutralization, at a rate of something like 0.018 ± .001 pH units per decade (mean of seven multidecadal pH datasets) … color me unimpressed.
So with that as prologue, let’s take a look at the oceanographic pH data which I discussed in my recent post called pH Sampling Density. In that post I noted that there should be enough data in either the area around Japan or in the North Atlantic to form some idea about the usability of the dataset. To begin with, here is the Atlantic data, along with Hawaiian HOT data and the Monterrey Bay data.
Figure 4. Atlantic pH measurements from oceanographic transects (blue circles), Hawaiian single-location HOT pH measurements (red-calculated, black-observed), and Monterey Bay pH measurements (cyan, with the standard deviations shown by whiskers). Black line is the expected decline in oceanic pH due to the increase in CO2. “Trend 1970 onwards” is the trend of the Atlantic oceanographic pH data.
There are several interesting aspects of this. First, the decline in the HOT measurements is close to the calculated decline due to CO2. Now, I have estimated this decline using the measured average changes in dissolved inorganic carbon DIC due to the increased atmospheric CO2. To do this, I’ve used the R code located here.
And while this is only an estimate, it turns out that it’s quite close to both the decline in the HOT and other multi-decadal single-location measurements cited above, and is also matched quite well by the trend in the Atlantic post-1970 oceanographic measurements of -0.019. It’s also worth noting that prior to about 1960 the calculated decline in pH is so small as to be almost invisible.
Next, Japan. This area has quite a bit more data, but like the Atlantic, unfortunately there is little data from about 1940 to 1960. Figure 5 shows the Japan data in the same format as Figure 4.
Figure 5. pH measurements from oceanographic transects off of Japan, (blue circles), Hawaiian single-location HOT pH measurements (red-calculated, black-observed), and Monterey Bay pH measurements (cyan, with the standard deviations shown by whiskers). Black line is the expected decline in oceanic pH due to the increase in CO2. “Trend 1970 onwards” is the trend of the Japanese oceanographic pH data.
Once again we see the same pattern as we saw in the Atlantic data, with an increasing trend in the latter years of the data, and a post 1970 trend of the same order of magnitude as the average of the seven multi-decadal studies cited above.
So there you have it. The oceanographic dataset confirms the gradual decline in pH, but doesn’t provide enough data prior to about 1960 to tell us much of anything. As usual, the problem is that the changes due to CO2 are so small that they are difficult to dig out of anything but the most accurate of datasets. This doesn’t mean that we can’t use the existing oceanographic measurements … it just means that we need to be cautious in their use.
Regards to everyone,
w.
AS USUAL: If you disagree with someone, please QUOTE THE EXACT WORDS THAT YOU OBJECT TO. Even with threading, it’s often quite difficult to determine what someone’s objection might be. Quoting their own words makes it clear just where your disagreement lies.
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Hey, thanks for the tip on the Lye….
Next, Japan. …. .., unfortunately there is little data from about 1940 …probably got blown up
Willis, here’s the link to Hawaii….it’s a mess….
http://www.pnas.org/content/106/30/12235.full.pdf
and the support info that spells out the mess….
http://www.pnas.org/content/suppl/2009/07/27/0906044106.DCSupplemental/0906044106SI.pdf#nameddest=STXT
basically..they ended up with a huge sine wave….just like temps….depending on where you “cherry” pick your start and finish…you can show a huge increase in pH….neural…..or a decline
If they had started around the late 1970’s and ended around 2004…and “if this trend continues” you would have your lye………..
Perzactly!
A good red wine has a pH of around 3.5 and rainwater around 5.8. I know of none who have forsaken either.
Quicklime is even better.
This is a myth. Quicklime preserves remains. Chemically dissolving a body completely is quite difficult.
I recommend wrapping in a blanket, soaking in kerosene and burning. The blanket acts as a wick for the rendered fat which then burns long enough and hot enough to reduce even bones to ash.
Yes, we’ve always used quicklime, too. Guess who we buy it from.
“Guess whom we buy it from,”
he corrected, slinking away in embarrassment, while ignoring the preposition he ended the sentence up with.
… from whom he buys it.
🙂
Sorry, but the idea that you can’t end a sentence with a preposition is just an urban legend … see the Oxford Dictionary blog for why.
And in any case, if we can’t end a sentence with a preposition … then what are we expected to end it with?
w.
Then what are we expected to end it with, if not a preposition? A phrase.
I really enjoyed reading this.
Ocean acidification by absorbing CO2 is a typical alarmist ploy. Take a mildly interesting phenomenon, then spin it wildly with the sole intent of scaring the poo out of the uninformed lumpen proletariat.
It was a relevation to me that we, and most of the Earth’s creatures, are more tolerant of acid than of alkali environments.
We also have to remember that acids, such as sulphuric and nitric, are produced my man in huge quantities, much of which ends up in the oceans.
Don’t get carried away with the pH of foods analogy. Our stomach acid is far lower pH than any food. Of course alkaline foods would be more disruptive to consume.
Quite agree that Ocean Neutralisation is not a concern though.
Thanks, MCourtny, but that just demonstrates my point. Exposure to something as alkaline as our stomach acids are acidic would dissolve the tissue in short order … we are far more tolerant to acids than to alkaline substances.
w.
For the most part, a very nice article.
“Exposure to something as alkaline as our stomach acids are acidic would dissolve the tissue in short order”
I don’t know about that. Ammonia cleaning solution is something like pH 12. Very irritating, but it won’t dissolve your skin.
“… we are far more tolerant to acids than to alkaline substances.”
In food yes, since stomach fluids are quite acidic.
Organisms evolve to adopt to their environments. If they are evolved to an environment at pH 8.0, within certain variations, a sufficiently large, rapid change to either the mean or the extremes is likely to be disruptive. The ability to tolerate transient variations does not mean the organism can adopt to a permanent variation of the same magnitude. Many trees and animals live in an environment that has temperatures below freezing several months a year. Permanent temperatures below freezing would kill them.
There are good reasons to be skeptical of claims that a small drop in ocean pH will be a catastrophe. But that does not mean that a sufficiently large drop in pH won’t radically alter the oceans.
Willis – they actually sell drinking water with a ph of 9.5. It tastes good and is supposed to have some interesting medicinal properties. Ray Kurzweil swears by it.
Mike M., ammonium cleaning agents are considered moderately base at 11 or 12 and have small amounts of ammonia.
Every month, new studies are released which show that marine organisms are far more adaptable to changes in pH and temperature than was formerly thought. A favorite mantra among Alarmists are that coral reefs are disappearing because of pH and temperature changes and we’re all going to die. That’s where my skepticism has already kicked in.
Most of the damage man has done to the marine environment has nothing to do with CAGW or neutralization. Crusading about “ocean acidification” or neutralization caused by man takes attention and funding away from real environmental concerns with respect to all bodies of water. That makes it more than a waste of time with limited financial resources. Socialists need to be cut off at the knees, financially (i.e. no more taxes). Scientists simply need more time and a lack of media attention before the human race takes any action in the above areas. Neither idea seems likely.
Just a ‘few’, ‘small’, issues, as usual, as follows:
How many of these values have been correctly normalized to 25 C (as pHs should properly be to allow valid comparison)? I have personally interviewed young grad students freshly off an oceanographic vessel who were found to have been accumulating such data without using a recently calibrated in situ temperature probe on the same platform. When questioned they revealed profound ignorance of the fact that pHs need to be temperature-normalized to allow a valid comparison.
How many of these values have been accumulated with a pH probe which had been specially manufactured for a (variable) high, ionic strength – in particular for sodium? It is well known in chemical engineering, hydrometallurgy etc., but strangely not environmentally or oceanographically that in a high Na+ (and NaSO4- ion pair) species environment a ‘regular’ pH probe is also responding to a small but significant (in terms of the above analysis) extent to the high free Na+ .
How many of these values have been accumulated with a pH probe which had not been two-point calibrated with say buffers at 7.000 (or 6.88) and 9.00 etc., the very same day? The mV slope through the 7.0 to 8.5 needs to be checked at least daily and most probes – especially the more modern gel-filled varieties typically degrade noticeably slope-wise over less than a year.
As a 66 year old geochemist who has truly ‘seen it all’ in respect of the quality and deep thought content of field parameter pH, EC, DO etc., monitoring over a 40+ year career (particularly in the Gen X & Y period ;-), I’d hazard a guess that the above analysis and its inferred trend could well be as deeply flawed historically and methodologically as e.g. the many AGW proponents claim Beck’s analysis of the whole suite of pre-IR atmospheric pCO2 values is. And please….don’t get me started on ice core CO2 methodology…..
This brings to mind the siting issues with surface station temperature values. We have numbers. Those numbers might be valid for within 10 feet of the station. But valid for global temperatures?
PS We use 7.00 and 10.00 buffers 3 times a day with a 4.00, 7.00 and 10.00 done twice a week. But we only deal with fresh water.
@Steve Short
you wrote: “And please….don’t get me started on ice core CO2 methodology…..”
But, please, DO get started on this topic! Since you have obviously great experience in analysis quality control, it would be quite interesting to hear your opinion about this subject, which is one of the main foundations of the orthodox IPCC views in AGW…
Thanks in advance for your answer to my request!
temperature normalized?
na, raw data is the best data ever.
Oh, very good.
w.
Wow!
Hey Mosher…..is that raw data after BEST adjusted it “is the best”…..or is that raw data after GISS adjusted it “is the best”….or is it raw data after step-wise adjustments “is the best”.
Because I am seeing less and less “raw data” used by the alarmist brood.
But Mosh…the raw data from an observation is both the Ph AND the temperature…then one normalizes it…but if the normalization algorithm is incorrect, and if you dont have the raw data, you will never get another shot at correcting your manipulation. In this case, the raw data, that is both Ph and temperature, is superior to the result of the normalization alone, reported as if it wasnt subject to some massaging before being reported.
Raw data should always be preserved, and the normalization algorithms should be rational, repeatable and open to inspection and critique.
Your post are often obtuse and tedious, relying of obsfucation and equivocation, two rhetorical techniques beneath you.
All raw data should be retained and reported. In the case of pH readings, GLP requires (at a minimum) that the person reports both the pH and temperature.
If one is going to compare pH readings, then one must first understand that pH represents the hydrogen ion activity not concentration. The hydrogen ion activity will change with a change in temperature for several reasons including the activity coefficients and dissociation constants are both temperature dependent.
As a simple example, consider pure water. The pH of pure water is 7.00 only when the temperature is 25 °C. If we lower the temperature, then the measured pH will actually increase as shown in this link. This means that what we call neutral pH depends on the temperature of that solution.
As Steve states, there are a lot of potential pitfalls in the area of pH measurement, especially when one is attempting to draw conclusions on small changes in pH. Reporting all raw data allows for a peer to be able to recreate and rigorously review the analysis and conclusions drawn. Reporting just the pH is insufficient for accomplishing this task.
The Station Aloha have been adjusted to 25 C: both the unadjusted and adjusted data are there in the file. Most of the ocean pH measurements are likely full of the kinds of problems Steve Short describes. The sites like Station Aloha were established to produce data that account for such things so that they can be used for valid comparisons.
The mischief-maker in me wants to start you up on the flaws in ice-core methodology. full article for WUWT please.
Agreed, but not here and now…
I could not agree with you more. pH “trends” are meaningless absent a discussion of measurement uncertainty.
Steve, exactly. The (apparent) increases in reported SST should show a very small increase in pH. Moshe is being a bit sarcastic about “normalizing” because he thinks its analogous to the fiddling that is done to the temperature record (time of day reading and station moves are legitimate but the continuous, ongoing changes and this automatic temperature shift point correction(?) are not – the temp can shift). I would do however agree with Moshe’s point, though. Simply take the pH as it is AND record the temperature – they are related variables.
Agreed!
Modern pH measurements are taken using spectrophotometry (+/- 0.001 pH units) or ion selective electrodes +/- 0.01 pH units). Temperature correction is a feature of pH electrodes, not of the [H+] ion concentration. Still, part of the measurement protocol is to either do the measurement in to temperature controlled cell or to correct electronically for the temperature for the measurement.
Willis, from your earlier pH density piece it looked like the gridspace in Red Sea off Jeddah is around 8.19 or closer to Hawaii than Alaska. We dove there and with some Aussies, who had also dived along Great Barrier Reef, and they thought the corals and fish life was extraordinary. I did too. Went out handline fishing and caught buckets of good grouper – what they call nigel.
So, not the same species and maybe not the biodiversity of Alaska waters?? but still amazing. or life adapts . . .
Bubba:
For some reason barracuda school in the Red Sea, and nowhere else that I know of. Did you notice that phenomenon?
There’s a species of Barracuda present off the West Coast of the US that schools and is fished as a sport fish. The fish are rather small — 2 or 3 kilograms (4 to 6 lbs) as I recall, but it’s been a long time. Perhaps I misremember
We did, but have seen many together in Bermuda too. Not sure they are schools.
Red Sea is definitely an eye-opener. Wouldn’t guess it was relatively so alkaline if you listened to the alarmist assumptions. Interesting contrast to the none-too distant Mediterranean, where to my casual observations, both diversity and productivity of marine life seems to decrease from west to east, co-incident with decreasing alkalinity (?anybody point to confirming or contrary data on this). However I doubt that pH has much at all to do with it, and more to do with availability of nutrients (and possibly, in the shallow waters, oxygen). The Med opens to the Atlantic via narrow straits at Gibraltar, and you see quite large differences in the marine life even from one side of the Rock to the other. My own take is that significantly large changes in pH may indeed have an effect on marine systems, favouring some species/assemblages over others, and we may even, locally, be able to observe those changes, but that nature is way more than capable of ensuring that major deleterious effects will not occur.
Sorry – silly second sentence from me. Willis’s map shows high pH at the extreme N. end of the Red Sea (the touristy bit) but the most,still very rich, is relatively more acid. Confusing, those colours, eh?
Perhaps the optimum pH for marine life is closer to the numbers you show for the Alaska environment. Perhaps some of the ocean’s waters becoming less alkaline is a good thing.
This is already proven by the very rich and thriving sea-life during the jurassic and cretaceous eras when there was about 4 – 5 times so much CO2 in the atmosphere than today. Why else are the lime-stone layers from this eras so mighty (e.g. Cliffs of Dover) and contain lots of corals and others sea-life fossils ???
The abundance of sea life is tied closely to the availability of nutrients, such as iron and phosphorus. Those are provided by upwelling and by the outflows of rivers, both a which probably lower the pH. But it is the nutrients, not the pH, that is key.
For the most part, biological productivity in the oceans is very low, since most parts of the near surface oceans are starved for nutrients.
OK, but don’t forget: CO2 can not only reduce the pH of the sea water somewhat but is – first and foremost – a vital nutrient for all kinds of algae which are one foundation of the food chain in the oceans. In this double role it can improve sea-life not only by its influence on pH…
The consumption of alkaline foods is very important for the health of the body. Our bodies are basically alkaline in structure, Our blood has a PH of about 7.458 and if it varies more than .10 up or down, we are in deep trouble. Our body fluids can vary in PH from 4.0 to 8.5 without great harm, but with a more acid environment in our body fluids, we are asking for diseases and organ failure over time. Acidosis of the body is a good way of increasing the risk of cancer and other life threatening events. I don’t know about the dafe PH of the oceans, but the balance of PH in the body is very important.
Charlie
Not that long ago I pointed out that blood acidosis could be a life-threatening condition, with the diagnosis threshold being an arterial pH of 7.35. The Big Hint being that deceptively small-sounding numerical differences can’t be naively dismissed out of hand. And that acid/alkaline have traditional use as relative terms in science, not just as absolute terms.
pH is important in the oceans, there have been so-called coral reef “bleachings” when pH has dropped below levels they’re used to. No one size fits all, different species in different environments have adapted to their local environments. Maybe they can adapt if the changes are gradual enough, maybe not. I chalk this one up to one of those things we don’t want to figure out empirically; lotsa people depend on reef ecosystems for food.
From the Victorian government site (AUS) on pool safety “If the water pH is higher than 8, anyone who swims in the pool is at risk of skin rashes, while a pH of lower than 7 can sting the swimmers’ eyes.
More relevant is the recommended parameters for aquariums. http://www.liveaquaria.com/PIC/article.cfm?aid=89
8.0-8.5 for coral reefs. The trend of -0.02 per decade might cause some grief to coral reefs growing in marginal areas in 100 years time but the ranges above suggest that they can cope until the population adapts to thrive.
The acidifying oceans scare started in the late 90s due to a drop of 0.1 from pre-industrial times. The above plots suggest that the only drop has occurred since IPCC times. Not necessarily people being deceitful but I can see a researcher getting a high result and deciding to re-calibrate the probe, while thinking ‘bloody ocean acidification’ if its a low reading.
Brandon Gates January 2, 2015 at 9:05 pm Edit
Thanks, Brandon. Actually, the Big Hint is that deceptively small-sounding INTERNAL pH differences can be significant. As you say, a slight change in your INTERNAL blood pH can make a huge difference to your health.
However, that means nothing regarding the current subject of discussion, which is the EXTERNAL oceanic pH differences. For example, humans swim equally well in Alaska and Hawaii, which are different in pH by 0.3 pH units … because the EXTERNAL oceanic pH has virtually no effect on our INTERNAL blood pH.
w.
So there’s no mechanism whatsoever that would internally affect marine organisms? I guess fish don’t breathe underwater then 😉
Humans do not swim equally well in Alaska and Hawaii. That was probably propaganda from the Alaskan Tourist Board.
I recall that when you hold your breath, the buildup of CO2 lowers the blood pH, for which the body has a sensor, and that prompts you to breathe (that choking sensation). Overbreathe, and the lack of CO2 raises the pH, and that makes you light-headed, so that slows your breathing.
That’s sort of a workaround for the body’s lack of an oxygen sensor.
Willis,
Thank-you, that’s a fair point. We do already know that various locations in the oceans have thriving marine populations and also show widely ranging pH concentration on an annual, seasonal and even daily basis. Organisms living in those environments have adapted to those local conditions. The concern is that movements in average pH will change the extremes in ways which stress keystone species, such as corals, which will then negatively affect other species in some locations. In this usage, oceanic pH, like GAT, is a yardstick. Both global and local uncertainties abound. We don’t know. Our not knowing is a risk in and of itself.
We do know that there have been pH excursions which stress reef systems (coral bleaching) so there is some fair amount of concrete observed risk already in evidence. Those things have already occurred at the “minimal” (and controversially uncertain) pH changes already observed. Could there be other reasons for those things? Yes. Could these things have happened before at higher pH levels and we have not observed them? Yes.
As someone who is not a marine biologist nor oceanographer, I’m loath to second-guess those who are. A healthy amount of skepticism, no problem. But in the end I am inclined to trust the experts in the field on these matters, and thus far what the research is saying is that, yes, lowering pH by such small amounts is already causing issues.
Hence my blood pH analogy.
The other point of that argument being: blood acidosis occurs in humans at a pH of 7.35, which as “everyone knows” is basic.
Brandon Gates January 5, 2015 at 6:41 pm
Thanks, Brandon. Do you have a citation for the claim that changes in pH have bleached coral reefs? I haven’t seen any, but the world of published papers is a big place …
Thanks,
w.
Willis,
Sure, you bet. K. R. N. Anthony et al. (2008), Ocean acidification causes bleaching and productivity loss in coral reef builders, open access: http://www.pnas.org/content/105/45/17442.full
Tank experiment in the lab so they could control for temperature, nutrients, etc. Some interesting stuff about why bleaching happens generally — temperature excursions and other things can do it too, it’s not that corals are “bleached by acid” which is obviously what most folks would think on hearing it. The expected things like calcification rate are in there and some interesting stuff on symbiosis with other species, metabolic pathways, etc.
Oh hey, we’ve got a model for that: http://www.biogeosciences-discuss.net/11/187/2014/bgd-11-187-2014.pdf
Ruben van Hooidonk, et al. (2013), Opposite latitudinal gradients in projected ocean acidification and bleaching impacts on coral reefs, open access: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gcb.12394/full
More models, but this time using CMIP5 output against prior corals research for impacts assessment, and a scan through the references shows a pretty good cross-section of all things coral … ah bingo:
Neil C. S. Chan and Sean R. Connolly (2013), Sensitivity of coral calcification to ocean acidification: a meta-analysis: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gcb.12011/full
Not free, but the supplimentary info has a spreadsheet full of the studies used in the meta analysis: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gcb.12011/suppinfo … 25 studies total, with duration of studies ranging from 3.8 years down to 2 hours. The nutritional note for that short study says, “Not fed”. No kidding …
Sorry, Brandon, but the first study is nothing but a lab study, and jacking CO2 in the lab means nothing about how coral reacts in the real ocean for a number of reasons. The coral reef is not just the coral itself, it’s all of the reef creatures as well. For example, coral tends to die if it is not regularly grazed by parrotfish … and as far as I can see, they didn’t include parrotfish in their experiment. Nor did they include many of the other hundreds of organisms that make up a healthy reef. It’s one of the big problems with studying a complex ecosystem—you can’t just grab one piece of it and study it in the lab.
However, there’s a much larger problem. That paper also says:
Say what? Previous studies “have not observed a bleaching response”, which agrees with what I’ve read. So since they couldn’t get the appropriately frightening results, they’ve added extra light to get the corals to bleach … and you actually believe this kind of stuff? Hang on, let me figure out how to convert their units …
Great googly moogly, 1000 μmol photons m−2 s−1 is equivalent to an illumination of sunlight of no less than 4,500 W/m2 … which is more than four times the maximum intensity of sunlight at the tropical surface. Are we supposed to be impressed that the corals bleached under that onslaught? Four thousand plus watts per square metre, that’s hilarious. I can see why they expressed it in μmol photons m−2 s−1, so people wouldn’t immediately just point and laugh. My friend, you need to become a whole lot more skeptical, and actually look at the studies that you are recommending.
The second study, as you point out, is a model study of a model study … sorry, not interested. Those are just guesses by people with an axe to grind. That study claims that:
I’m interested in actual observations, not computer-based hyperbole. Corals evolved during the Paleozoic, when CO2 levels were two or three times as high as today. So I’m afraid that some geek sitting at his computer model predicting gloom and doom is less than convincing when we know they’ve survived those CO2 levels in the past …
Your third citation is to yet another computer model of a reef … boooring. We have no evidence that any of these models have been tested, verified, or validated. And it is most probable that they were built by true believers. You know, the kind of believers who add super-bright lights to bleach corals and then claim it’s from CO2. You seem impressed by such models. Me, I know that they are not tested as extensively as the models we use to run our elevators … not impressed.
I’m a man who wrote his first computer program more than fifty years ago. After a lifetime of both writing and using a host of computer models, I’m clear that a computer model is only a fast way to calculate the understandings, misunderstandings, and prejudices of the modeler who wrote the program.
Finally, your last reference says nothing about bleaching that I can find. Also, I am always very suspicious about “meta-analyses”. If the effect is so weak that it cannot be demonstrated by a single analysis, stacking up a bunch of individually inconclusive analyses doesn’t make it any stronger. In addition, it is quite common for such analyses to be beset with bad statistics, as well as post-hoc study selection. Meta-analyses are a pit of snakes, you need to look very, very closely at such results.
In closing, let me say that many people misunderstand coral bleaching. It is not the death of the reef, not by any means. Instead, it is one of the many ways that the reef adapts to changing conditions. When those conditions change enough, the symbiotic coral organisms die off (bleaching) and are replaced by other organisms which are adapted to the new conditions. I’ve seen the process in action diving on the reefs after thermal bleaching, and it’s surprisingly quick—a few seasons, and you can’t tell that the corals were ever bleached.
My best to you, and thanks for the citations, they provided some needed humor in an otherwise serious evening. 4.5 kilowatts per square metre of light and I’d bleach in a few moments …
w.
Willis,
Why would you apologize to me for something I told you myself?
I guess you missed the lecture when isolating variables was in the lesson plan.
One wonders what the surrounding text said …
Oh I agree, human-generated hyperbole is far superior.
[note: carefully edited for clarity]
Good grief, you missed the lecture on mass extinctions too? Join the Holocene aready, science has come a long way since the Cambrian explosion ended very badly at the end of the Permian.
I tell ya’, some days I do wonder if my faith in Darwin is misplaced.
Ok, how do you figure out whether some future event will happen or not?
What kind of evidence do “we” require? To what mailing address does one send such evidence? How fast do “we” need it? How long will “we” require to reivew and accept said evidence and accept or reject it? Have “we” ever heard of peer-review?
Do “we” understand that major scientific journals with lots of money and prestige at stake do not publish crap on a whim?!?
I guess “we” really just don’t get it after all. Color “us” shocked.
As opposed to false believers.
By the way, what is the definition of a “true believer”? Are they second-cousins of True Scotsmen? And since your’re so big on evidence, how is it you come to your conclusion that this particular batch of researchers “probably” fit that definition? I mean … really … a proper skeptic such as yourself wouldn’t just believe any old thing without — what’s that word you guys ironically (mis)use all the time — proof would you?
You missed the lecture on synthesis too I guess. The key words are from the abstract are: aragonite saturation state; carbonate chemistry; CO2; coral calcification; coral reefs; pH, all of which you’ll find in the other literature I cited. Try reading for comprehension, and you just might figure out what the dealeo behind the bright lights is.
Also recall, if feasible without doing too much damage, what you pointed out in your opening remarks; these are complex organisms in a complex enviroment, and that means understanding as many as possible observables so as to be able to make more accurate predictions. Otherwise known as doing good science. Perhaps you’re familiar with the concept?
pH ain’t the only measurable quantity here, it just happens to be the one you’re apparently hyperfocused on at the moment. Capice?
They’re controversial to be sure. Publication bias is probably the biggest knock against them in my view.
Where is it written that the only reason to gather multiple samples is to manufacture a pre-conceived conclusion? Not in any stats book I’ve ever studied, and I’m surely no expert at that any more than I am at marine biology. What do the authors themselves say about why they did their analysis?
Guess whose turn it is to cough up the citations?
So you read peer-reviewed literature for laffs, and I read this blog for the same. Suddenly the world begins to make sense to me.
You know, that was exactly the idea. Pretty smart these people who actually know what they’re doing, aren’t they?
Geez, Brandon, get a grip.
You argue about every nit-piickin’ little thing, parsing it just the way you want it. I’d be surprised if everyone shares your personal concerns. I’ve certainly had worse said about me. It’s part of the deal with commenting.
At one point you ask:
What kind of evidence do “we” require? [to validate a model]
How about predicting a series of events based on your model’s algorithm? Predict when, for example, global warming will commence, and at what annual rate? Or will it be global cooling? If your model works, it might predict that, too.
Tell us the year those events will begin. Will global T go up, or down? What will the trend line look like?
Simples …if your model can predict — and if it can’t, what good is it?
dbstealey,
The obligatory lead-off ad hom, with an amusing nit-pick about picking nits.
The appeal to popularity.
The ad hom, reprise but with contrast.
Finally addresses an actual argument …
… but does so by asking a disingenuous question …
… then asks about a continuous physical process as if it were something that has only two possible states …
… tosses out the opposite logical possibility as if it inherently carries an equal probability of happening …
… proposes a model with dissociative identity disorder …
… goes back to inventing imaginary boundaries …
… asks again what he very well knows has already been answered many times by the IPCC …
… and for the grand finale, forgets that “all models are always wrong” is nigh indisputable, unavoidable truth, and that “but some are useful” is a matter of subjective opinion.
Yet again fails to provide the one objective thing which would settle this argument in his favor: a “skeptical” model which is more skillful at prediction than anything produced by numerous consensus climate teams.
Gates says:
The obligatory lead-off…
Which does nothing whatever to falsify it. But clearly, the truth hurts enough to complain about it.
All these LO-O-O-O-O-NG replies to simple facts mean nothing. They are obfuscation.
Almost always, the truth is simple:
No alarmist predictions have ever happened, or global warming stopped many years ago, or there are still no measurements of AGW.
And so on. There is no need to publish a long mish-mash of pixels, unless you’re trying to cover up simple truths.
In chemistry class they told us that human blood has buffers in it to damp out acids/bases, and there are 20:1 more buffers to handle acids because most chemical reactions in the body produce acids. Sea creatures probably the same.
Thanks, Willis.
Cheers.
Willis, did you account for the oversampling for depth > 0 from 1980 onwards? This tends to skew the results as pH decreases with depth.
Here is what I get with depth = 0:
http://oi60.tinypic.com/21do9qd.jpg
When I used depth = 0 data, with obvious outliers filtered, I got this result:
http://oi60.tinypic.com/9s7xvo.jpg
And when I took the average, variance and deviation for depth = 0, I got this:
http://oi60.tinypic.com/289egt4.jpg
There were also there results:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/12/30/ph-sampling-density/
+1
The Station Aloha data that Willis posted earlier show a trend of -0.0171 ± 0.0018 per decade.
“The result is +0.003±0.026/decade, therefore the null result is incontrovertible.” No, that just means that those data are not good enough to detect the trend.
filtering outliers!!!!
na, use the raw data, you cant throw data away.
Apparently you can if your name is Phil Jones.
Hey, just had a great idea. Let’s interpolate the pH data over all the ocean! /
Mosh, you are a bitter man.. I always wondered why you “ran off the rails”. Turns out that “Best” was really the “Worst” for you. Get a grip on it man…..Ya wanna be a star, Put on your “Big Boy” boots and stop crying like a baby when criticism comes your way…what a whiner……….otherwise, reinvent yourself to avoid being a broken record.
@Steven Mosher: Please don’t act obtuse. Of course you don’t throw the raw data away, but you do discard outliers sometimes and you do normalize against another property that affects the data of interest in order to apply reasoned analysis.
Your posts have become less worthwhile over time, and are now simply a waste of bits.
Steven Mosher January 2, 2015 at 5:34 pm
SteveS January 2, 2015 at 9:53 pm
Thanks, SteveS, but you are missing the humor entirely … understandable, as Mosh subjects his posts to extreme data compression. Let me try to explain.
People tell Mosh all of the time that Berkeley Earth and other temperature groups should “use the raw data”, and complain bitterly when they do anything at all to the original observations … but now, folks are complaining because people ARE using the raw data when they should filter out the obvious outliers. (Bear in mind that the total range of reported pH values in the dataset goes from 0 to 24041 …)
So Mosh is taking the mickey out of those folks, by pointing out that indeed, often the raw data simply cannot be used as it comes in over the transom.
Unfortunately, he left off the [sarc] and [/sarc] tags …
All the best,
w.
Willis
You conclude your interpretation of the post from Steven Mosher by saying
Sorry, but the series of complaints at the post from Steven Mosher are because there is a deeper problem than missing tags.
I suspect your interpretation of Mosher’s post may be correct, but it is your interpretation and it may or may not be correct. Importantly, as gary turner says, posts from Steven Mosher are usually “obtuse”, and this problem is compounded by the habit of Steven Mosher responding with abuse when questioned as to what he meant.
Steven Mosher has a degree in English so there is no excuse for the obtuse posts which he normally provides and which waste space in threads. I support the advice to Steven Mosher provided in this sub-thread by SteveS.
Richard
An excerpt from Steven Mosher’s biography, which throws some light on his comments above.
He attended Northwestern University where he graduated with honors and BA’s in both English Literature and Philosophy.
It used to be usual to show the data that you dismissed as an outlier. I think that people want to see from BEST, say, the average over 50-100 periods for only stations opened for the full period. No homogenising, gridding or anomalies not because it would represent the correct global average but it would give people an idea of how much the data has been adjusted. Noisy and with no obvious cooling trends and people might accept the adjustments better.
The raw data for the few individual stations that I’ve checked doesn’t leave me feeling confident of the final result. And as I have pointed out before, BEST has monthly averages with half a degree uncertainty for my area 15 years before any data was recorded for a 200 km radius, and 50 years before BOM think that the records are reliable.
The town Mildura has a station, Mildura Airport going back to earlier than 1947 when it opened. No station change indicated between 1947 and 1950 with just QC failed marked (I wonder why). A lot of data missing between 1950 and 1980 at the 7 stations less than 100 km away but break points of a tenth of a degree were identified and corrected?
http://berkeleyearth.lbl.gov/stations/151971
Warburton Range only has data for Warburton Airfield within a 200 km radius. Your QC says 0 months missing 10 days or more of data. BOM doesn’t have any monthly data for 1957-1964 and 1956 is missing a month. The only break point is in 1962 but the area, just Giles 208 km away, also shows cooler years like at Warburton in the maximum and minimum temperatures. How could you possibly find a break point?
http://berkeleyearth.lbl.gov/stations/4663
http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/ncc/cdio/weatherData/av?p_display_type=dataGraph&p_stn_num=013017&p_nccObsCode=36&p_month=13
http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/ncc/cdio/weatherData/av?p_display_type=dataGraph&p_stn_num=013017&p_nccObsCode=36&p_month=13
I hope you aren’t contracting climatologist clinical depression that is spreading …dare I say alarmingly? …among those whose careers have been too rigidly and certainly attached to the MEME. You at least have English Lit to fall back on. Think of the older TEAM who have expended their entire careers chasing phlogiston while the whole science has begun to climb above their groove. Moshe, Moshe, you are a smart man. You didn’t have so much invested in the failure. You did the Best but get over it.
Willis gets it.
of course people never ask how I switched from being a literature major to a data analyst/stats person
this reading list might help
http://www.amazon.com/The-Measurement-Meaning-Charles-Osgood/dp/0252745396
and the relationship between information theory and the arts ( a great book for its time)
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xxt8aa_technology-book-review-an-introduction-to-information-theory-symbols-signals-and-noise-by-john-r-pie_creation
so ya, when you start as a math and physics major and switch to the arts and then take a job in engineering.. the common thread is hard for stupid people to see.
That common thread is information theory.
So, when you see something uncommon in a data stream ( high entropy) that bit can be one of two things
A) noise/outlier, get rid of it
B) something VERY important.
That’s why I scoff at people who think that Raw data should be worshipped. There are times when its junk
and other times where its not.
deciding when a bit is junk and when a bit is actually important information is not a simple thing.
At any given time on on WUWT you will find people acting as if raw data is beyond reproach. You will
find them berating folks who do adjustments. I like to take the piss out of these folks..
See above for why people have little faith in your ability to spot junk.
Four break points and I can draw you an elephant. Five and I can make its trunk swing.
thanks Ferd
ferdberple January 2, 2015 at 3:00 pm
Thanks, Ferd. My results are solely from the surface observations (depth = 0).
Also, using a straight line trend merely proves that you’ve used a straight line trend …
w.
using a straight line trend merely proves
==============
the point of the straight line was to show graphically how little variance there is in the result. If the data was truly poor quality it should be all over the place. the yearly average should show large swings above and below the the straight line trend.
But it doesn’t. Which contradicts that assertion that the data is not of sufficient quality to calculate a trend. There is so little variance in the average year to year, in spite of the large number of points, taken at different times and places, by different vessels and different scientists. This is speaking volumes.
this is the graph I’m referring to:
http://oi60.tinypic.com/289egt4.jpg
No, that just means that those data are not good enough to detect the trend.
=============
see the graph above fro 3:00 pm. the very low variance, typically well under 0.1 pH, tells us that the data is good quality. it isn’t that one can’t detect a trend, rather that the trend = 0 for the past 105 years.
Thanks, Ferd, but I can’t tell what you are doing. Are you really averaging the Caspian Sea with the mid-Pacific? If so, why?
And are you averaging monthly or annually? Are you averaging the pH (wrong), or first converting it to H+, averaging, and then converting back to pH?
Next, if the third panel above is the average, sd, and variance of the data in the second panel, I don’t see how that can possibly be true. You have data running from a pH of 6 to 10 … I’m not buying that the standard deviation of that data is a tenth of a pH unit.
Finally, what’s with the miniscule scales? Looking at those teeny lines, anything is possible.
Lemme take a look and I’ll see what my numbers say, but I can’t see any use in the kind of average you are doing. It’s like averaging absolute temperatures from all over the planet that are bunched up in space and time and expecting the result to mean something.
w.
keep in mind we are only trying to see if the data is good enough to compute a trend. we are not interested in the actual pH of the oceans, so we don’t care what our numbers represent. so long as the underlying data is bound by the central limit theorem, to the extent that the process that generates the pH reading can be considered random as to location and season, then the result should be normally distributed, from which we should be able to make some determination of data quality.
OK, ferdberple, I’ve graphed your data (annual averages of all surface pH readings regardless of locations) in a more visible manner.
The true linear trend could fall anywhere within the red lines. As you can see, this means that the trend could be up, down, or level … and there’s no way to tell.
Which means that if we use all of the data, the result is not good enough to say anything about the true trend … but that’s no surprise. We’ve mixed up pH from alongshore, from upwelling zones, from mid-ocean, from inland seas, from enclosed bays, from everywhere.
In addition, the sampling is bunched in time, so perhaps early in the period there are more samples from low pH areas, and late there are more samples from high pH areas, which would give a false trend … and as a result of all of those problems, the dataset is not useable as a whole.
Which is not to say that subsets of the data are not useable. I’ve shown two such subsets above, the North Pacific and the area around Japan. These are at least relatively homogeneous. If you want to look at another one, I’d maybe look at the Caspian Sea, or perhaps another sample-dense area like the Black Sea or the Baltic, you might find something there.
w.
It’s like averaging absolute temperatures from all over the planet that are bunched up in space and time and expecting the result to mean something.
============
consider this:
if one was to instead compute averages for each location, then compute anomalies, and then group all the anomalies according to a grid, that would work fine so long as your locations did not change over time.
However, as we have seen with the weather temperature data, this leads to huge problems when stations move. The pH data is a moving station problem.
An alternative approach is simply to consider each absolute temperature reading as a random sample on the surface of the earth. Given enough of these samples, to the extent that they can be considered random, that in itself should be sufficient calculate a pretty reliable average temperature of the earth, without any need to take location averages, compute anomalies, grid the result, make adjustments, etc. etc.
Willis, I have tried to convince Ferd with the same arguments, but it seems difficult to convince him. While his method doesn’t even work for temperature, where there are lots of stations, but a move of a few stations or a drop in number of stations (as was the case for the collapse of the USSR) will skew the result. It only works if you have a representative sample of the full population.
In the case of ocean pH measurements it is even much worse, as the cruises over the years are one year east-west in the Pacific, the next year north-south in the Atlantic and there is a huge oversampling of the oceans below Japan, which shows a similar pH drop for fixed places:
http://www.data.jma.go.jp/kaiyou/english/oa/oceanacidification_en.html
There seems to be a firm increase of measurements in the Baltic Sea after 1990. Problem is that the Baltic is not open ocean, but a largely enclosed brackish water sea with a lot of runoff from rivers and only some ocean water coming in with the tides (the Mediterranean is even worse, but its salt content is higher than in the oceans due to evaporation).
Anyway, have a look at the sample distribution in the critical years 1990-1995, when there is a (for open oceans) huge drop of 0.15 pH unit in a few years time, here compiled by Wallace:
http://www.abeqas.com/ph-1990s/
From 1990 on the measurements in the Baltic Sea increase, while at the same time the total number of measurements decreases. I am pretty sure things like that skew the pH record…
The true linear trend could fall anywhere within the red lines. As you can see, this means that the trend could be up, down, or level … and there’s no way to tell.
==============
Yes Willis, a much closer result. However, even this tells us something. The red lines represent probability. And this probability is not uniformly distributed between the red-lines. Our answer is more likely to lie towards the mid-point, towards the trend-line between the red-lines, than it is to lie outwards towards the red-lines.
So while our answer MAY lie anywhere between the red-lines, it is MORE LIKELY to be closer to the mid-point than it is to lie towards the red-lines. And, what is the mid-point between the red-lines? What does the trend-line tell us over 100+ years?
The trend looks pretty well zero. Not negative. So, on the basis of probabilities, this data shows no evidence that ocean pH is decreasing. It holds open the possibility that ocean pH is increasing or decreasing, but the MOST LIKELY answer is that pH is not increasing or decreasing.
And this is the information that was not presented to Congress.
While his method doesn’t even work for temperature, where there are lots of stations, but a move of a few stations or a drop in number of stations (as was the case for the collapse of the USSR) will skew the result.
==============
?? that doesn’t make sense. Or course it will work if there are lots of stations. Why say “but” after “stations”, except to try and follow with a rebuttal? Why rebut unless you know that the method wilt work but can’t bring yourself to admit it. Your words betray you.
And of course any process that removes randomness can skew the result. In this the method is not alone. The brute force random method is like democracy. It is the worst possible way to calculate the average, except for all others.
There are methods to restore randomness and reduce the uncertainty. However, I’m not paid by big oil or big government to do this. I have a day job and have simply tackled the problem as a concerned citizen. People that get paid to check that government officials are providing the full truth and nothing but the truth can take it from here
Ferdberple, you reported “The result is +0.003±0.026/decade”. So it can be anywhere from -0.023 to +0.029. That is completely consistent with the result of -0.017 per decade based on high-quality data. The data you have are not good enough to tell the difference between -0.017 and 0.000.
Ferd, when a lot of Russian stations were abandoned as the local people weren’t paid anymore. many of them were located in Siberia, known for their harsh winter conditions. By coincidence (?) “global” temperatures increased in that period.
The pH data are already heavy weighted towards the oceans south of Japan. No problem in itself, but as the total number of sampling decreased and at the same time the sampling in the Baltic Sea increased (which has a rather low pH), the drop in pH for the total of the samples may be simply the result of the changes in number and place of sampling and not caused by a real global drop in pH.
We are probably raised to be scared of ‘acid’. In the science lab, under the car bonnet, we are told to be careful where acid is found. Then warmists scare people with the ‘acidification of the oceans’ claim. The gullible know that must be automatically something bad.
Just tell the gullible that the oceans are becoming less caustic.
(Frankly, if I went to the beach I’d be more concerned with meeting Jaws than a 0.01 pH change.8-)
Thanks Willis, very informative as always. When I scan all the “news” from MSM I get really angry with the endless barrage of climate fiction scare stories. I commented about ocean ph a few times and the CAGW crowd deliver insults faster than Don Rikkles could have! No discussing anything with that kind of vitriol.
I really don’t think that you can just assume that sea life prefers lower pH just because you believe that there is more sea life in the waters around Alaska (a continental shelf environment) compared with Hawaii (an oceanic environment that just happens to have some large volcanos sticking up from the abyssal plain). Correlation does not prove causation. There are plenty of other factors that change between the two (temperature, turbidity, habitat). The mere fact that one is continental and one is oceanic may suggest why the Alaskan water is more neutral – freshwater run off which carries higher levels of nutrients).
That said, your point that Sea life is adapted to higher pH is well made. Interestingly there is an anecdotal story in regards to Humpbacks in Western Australia. Apparently on their migration South along the coast they have been know to stop off for several days at the mouth of discharging rivers. I assumed that this was for anti fouling reasons, but it might also reduce stress.
When we are arguing about the ability to lay down calcium carbonate, we should remember that human body is buffered very close to neutral and nobody has turned into a sack of jelly because of it.
Goldie January 2, 2015 at 3:21 pm
Sorry for the lack of clarity, Goldie. That wasn’t my meaning at all. What I meant was that sea live thrives both in Hawaii and in Alaska, and is by all appearances totally unaffected by differences in the alkalinity level.
w.
Yes, I think that pH is a bit irrelevant except where it causes stress by being too high.
If the oceans did ever actually turn acid – very hard to do given their buffering capacity, the first impact we might expect to see would be dissolution of inanimate calcium carbonate, not active living calcium carbonate. Apparently the CAGW doomsayers have forgotten that there is an enormous quantity of limestone or calcareous sandstone on our coastlines.
Goldie,
At the risk of over simplifying, there are basically 2 different marine ecosystems. A food web adapted to upwelling zones and and a food web adapted to minimal upwelling. In the upwelling zones, diatoms comprise the major phytoplankton assemblages. In upwelling zones deep, acidic waters accompany the nutrition rich-oxygen poor water that are brought near the surface. So diatoms have siliceous shells that are impervious to changes in to any dramatic changes in pH typically observed in upwelling waters. Away from coastal and equatorial upwelling zones where upwelling has an insignificant impact on ocean pH, plankton with calcareous shells that would elsewhere be sensitive to upwelling predominate.
Furthermore as we drop in depth and beyond the penetration of light required by photosynthesizing plankton, pH becomes increasingly acidic because respiration by decomposing bacteria dominates and releases more CO2 into the water. Organisms living at greater depths are more adapted to more acidic waters, and thus “prefer” lower pH. It is the organisms living at the boundaries of significant upwelling that can experience detrimental pH effects. Many bottom dwelling organisms can suffer rapid extermination during acidic upwelling events. However it is not clear to what degree pH contributes the die-off versus the accompanying lack of oxygen. Shellfish species have calcareous shells susceptible to acidification but they inhabit the sea floor bottoms and theoretically can be most susceptible to acidic upwelling. However one adaptive response is to simply burrow deeper into the sediment and “hibernate” during any acidic upwelling events.
So in response to your reply regards “preferring lower pH”, there are indeed segments of the marine ecosystem that prefer low vs high pH. Upwelling zones exhibit dramatic increases in productivity that is exploited by specific species in the food web. However the degree of upwelling is periodic and those species undergo booms and busts.
In low upwelling zones like the center of ocean gyres, very different species exist that are highly adapted to a less productive but more reliable environment. Those species are better adapted to recycling limited supplies of energy and plankton with shells that are more often calcareous and susceptible to acidification predominate.
Jim, thanks, I am not entirely unversed in this topic. However it seems to me that your discussion is actually suggesting that reducing pH in the oceans to any great extent might actually have impacts at the margins.
No I am not “suggesting that reducing pH in the oceans to any great extent might actually have impacts at the margins. ” even though thereis a connection. The biological pump will continue to keep waters more acidic at depth. Only less photosynthesis will pump less CO2 to depth. Seasons and cycles will vary the strength of upwelling and acidification along the coasts.
Jim, thanks for that overview. You say:
Let me add that the big fear seems to be that a slight drop in pH will keep marine organisms from forming calcareous shells (shells made of carbon rather than silaceous shells made of silicon).
For exhibit A in that category, may I point out that the humble mussel has a calcareous shell, and it not only lives along upwelling coasts where the pH is much lower than in the open ocean. It also lives in fresh water, where the pH is significantly lower than along upwelling coasts.
How does it do that? Well, like all of life, it is internally capable of locally reversing the local external conditions. I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating:
In the ocean, chemistry doesn’t rule life — life rules chemistry.
w.
Jim, thanks for your comments. I enjoy it when a biologist brings sensible insights to bear.
I would add radiolarians, a zooplankton with an external skeleton made of silica, to your illustration of the complexity of the aquatic stew of many flavors that is our ocean. Many of these organisms migrate vertically in the water column during the diurnal cycle and no doubt expeience pH variations on a regular basis.
http://userwww.sfsu.edu/biol240/labs/lab_06protists/media/radiolarian.gif
Kudos to Willis goes without saying.
Agreed and your saying is spot on: “In the ocean, chemistry doesn’t rule life — life rules chemistry.”
Many organisms have adapted by internally controlling pH by sequestering carbonates, etc
Furthermore, there is a higher abundance of sea life around upwelling zones because these waters have more nutrients, e.g. iron, not because marine organisms prefer lower pH in general. Iron is generally the limiting component in ocean primary productivity.
Thanks, Willis.
“It’s also why I say that calling the process “acidification” is merely an attempt to increase alarm.”
I used words to that effect at a NOAA “Open House” event last year. No wonder why I could not get a job offer from them.
They have many better-fitting candidates. And it shows.
Only if “better-fitting” means more willing to ignore inconvenient realities and to espouse alarmism …
w.
Ha, that reminds me of the time I went for a lab tech job at the CRU.
I wasn’t asked back for a second interview, without even a rejection. Yet, my qualifications and experience were well beyond that required.
Perhaps, on reflection, they realised exactly what my scepticism implied? And they couldn’t face a serf questioning the neo-pause.
I was early (asserts I)… sadly I can’t prove it.
MCourtney:
Interesting. They have a lot to hide at CRU, so I imagine they are well-practiced at sniffing out the skeptical types.
Caldeira and Wickett 2003 link the surface pH directly to atmospheric CO2, predicting a drop of about -0.4 pH units when the atmospheric CO2 hits 700 ppm. Since we should hit 700 ppm by 2110 (RCP6), they are proposing a somewhat faster rate of decline (about 0.3 units per century compared to your estimate of about 0.18 per century). But according to them, effects on marine life of pH at 7.6 will be dire. Their graph is fascinating to see, since if we went to 700 ppm in a mere 10 years, the ocean would follow suit instantaneously (right half of the figure).
On the other hand, according to Dore et al 2009, we are already at 7.6 at a depth of 1 km.
By the way, the 2.5-million observations of pH show a similar relation to depth as found by Dore:
So I do think the dataset could be of some use assuming careful analysis and application of QA/QC techniques when available (e.g., concurrent observations of DIC, TA, pCO2 etc.)
Your last graph is fascinating. Why is there no data for negative depths? And what is that sloping straight line through the left half of the picture?
heh heh. not to mention fitting an obviously nonlinear function to a linear regression. that works.
Decreasing pH with increasing depth is the opposite of what one would expect if human-emitted CO2 is the cause. If pH is decreased due to carbonic acid formed from dissolved atmospheric CO2, then one would expect pH to be lower and the ocean-atmopshere interface, i.e. the surface.
Except that you need to take into account what happens in the biosphere with depth… The above graphs show no trends, they only show a snapshot of the CO2 profile. Dissolved inorganic carbon is lowest near the surface, as that is where most of the calcifying organisms grow…
That red line on your last graph is meaningless. There is a rapid drop (0.35 over 1 km) in pH to about 1,000 m and then it levels off to about 0.1 over 5000 m.
Phasinating phacts.
Phraudulent phear-mongering phanatics phorcing phalse phacts phor phinancial phunding.
Phools!
Firstly, thanks very much for doing this work. Funny how a volunteer such as yourself is producing more useful data than the people paid to do it at the IPCC.
I’m not a physiologist but I suspect that the information you have regarding pH in diet is a little off. For example, lemon juice is healthy not because its acidic, but because it produces an alkaline reaction in vivo. And while the body is fine with acidic foods (as long as the quality is good), it absolutely needs alkaline substances. Processed dairy milk is bad for your bones because a) it has little nutritional value, b) it congests the intestine and c) it is acidic.
Soft drinks of any kind are disastrous because they are acidic, not just because of the sugar (or worse, the synthetic sweeteners). Soft drinks can be pH 2.5 or so while beer is merely 4 or so (and has fewer ingredients, therefore it’s ‘healthier’ than soda).
Your comment seems to confirm the placard I saw in a bar in Angle Inlet, Minnesota.
It read:
” beer has food value,
food has no beer value”
cheers
Coke (and other cola brands) contains phosphoric acid, good to burn holes in your stomach (if you have a defect in the gland), other drinks usually contain citric acid but may be buffered with sodiumcitrate…
Why should a pH-scare be different from a global-warming scare or from a high-voltage power line scare or from a radon-scare or from an ocean-rising scare? We don’t discuss good predictions with friends or neighbors: we mostly share alarms. Sharing of non-alarms is unethical. Sharing of false alarms should be unethical and punishable.
You forgot the “Ozone Hole”.
The CAGW scare is fading with the public. Time to throw something else against the wall to see if it sticks.
I have no reason not to accept the data that more acidic water s of Alaska has more wildlife than Hawaii’s more alkaline waters. However, several doctors told me that the human body, if more alkaline is more resistant to illnesses. And consuming lemon juice (an acid) will make the human body more alkaline and therefore more healthy. There seems to be a discrepancy on whether more alkaline is better or not to life… Can anyone educate me here?
Blood pH should be in the range 7.35 to 7.45. Some people believe that slightly on the alkaline side is better than slightly on the acid side. But I don’t know if there is any evidence for that. Unless, perhaps, you are prone to gout.
The best pH for an organism is the pH for which that organism evolved.
The pH that is best for an organism is within the range of the pH in which that organism evolved.
The term “evolution” is not compatible with the concept of a static world.
The gist of this story is that lemon juice (and other citrus) contain citric acid which comprises three chemical R-COOH groups. These are the acid termini of the citric acid molecule, with a tendency to donate their charged H’s (Protons) into the solution thus lowering the pH. This standard behaviour can be considered as an “overt” acidity and is easily measurable. It is also easily neutralised in the right circumstances. Adding lemon juice to gastric juice just means the gastric proton pump needs to work less harder to establish low pH for preliminary peptide digestion.
Some nutritionists also talk about “acid-forming foods”. This is a “covert” acidity as it is not directly measurable by a pH meter. It results from metabolic combustion of fuel-rich foods having long carbon chains (fats, starches). When these chains are broken down and the individual carbons are oxidised during metabolism to release chemical bond energy for ATP formation, the eventual target product is CO2, which one can exhale. But on the way there, the oxidised carbons form intermediates which contain R-COOH acidic carboxyl groups. Generally speaking, Western diets consume a lot of starch and fuel rich foods, more than is needed so these acid metabolites can build up like a traffic jam. When balanced with vegetables that are rich in minerals and particularly mineral cations that can balance these acidic carboxyl groups, the “acidification” of the interstitial fluids of the body is kept in check. When the metabolic acids are in excess, “acid” deposts can accumulate around joints and in deep muscular tissues, leading to fascia and joint inflammation, stiffness and the like.
Bear in mind that blood pH is tightly regulated within a narrow slightly alkaline range at about pH 7.4 If you force this toward the alkaline end, say by hyperventilating, you get a condition called respiratory alkalosis, and your head feels dizzy. So blood pH is always well buffered otherwise our brains would notice! But that does not apply to the rest of the body water that is more distal to the flowing blood, and which can locally attain hyper-acidity. Localised acid cannot be actively transported; you have to allow it to diffuse out. Drinking lots of water and good exercise will help. Acidity occurs particularly in regions that stagnate in water exchange rates due low blood flow and/or to sedentary practice,such as around the pelvis, due to lots of sitting at the computer desk. So there is a move now to drink alkaline water and consume barley and wheatgrass etc; to redress the imbalance we have acquired through over-eating of sweets and starches in particular. Vegetable and salad eaters (exclusing pasta, rice and potato) are less likely to get acidity hotspots than the potato and bread devourers.
Experimentally I have found that eating a meal of a dark green leafy vegetable such as kale or bok choy in the evening induces a strong alkaline response the next day, measurable by a pH test of saliva. OTOH the more I deviate into bread and biscuits, the more acid my saliva becomes. Saliva is meant to be alkaline normally, which condition contends against mouth bacteria causing teeth and gum disease.
Although lemon juice is overtly acidic, it does not fuel the body to any considerable degree; it has no significant “covert” acid value. On the other hand it does contain minerals as well, so that at the end of the metabolic train, it’s contribution is at least neutral,if not slightly alkaline. It’s a kind of paradox, in that we don’t expect this.
Would a “neutral view” would actually be acidified wouldn’t it?
Can’t see the forest for the woulds.
Two important points are absent from this discussion so far concern WHY oceanic pH varies in the way that it does.
The answer is simple: when photosynthesis & other life processes occur, CO2 and carbonic acid ions in ocean water are removed and transformed causing the pH to become more alkaline. In places where respiration dominates. CO2 is freed and lowers the pH.
Life processes so dominate this equation that all the added atmospheric partial pressure of CO2 accomplishes is to fertilize the photosynthetic process.
The second is that the buffering capacity of oceanic basins are so enormous that one would probably need several oceans of carbonic acid to titrate them down. Some one better than me can do the math to determine just how many oceans of carbonic acid it would take to eliminate inate buffering of ocean water and the megatons of calcareous bedrock in direct contact in their basins.
The whole topic is Potemkin villages all the way down suitable for the marxists who attempt to perpetrate the fraud on “us poor suckers” /sarc.
The problem with using all this “real data” is that it’s all over the place, it’s inconsistent, it varies from day to day, season to season, year to year, decade to decade and then it also varies from one location to another.
No-one, even climate super-hero’s, can be expected to deal with all that variation & inconsistency. Climate scientists need nice clean data to work with, data which is properly aligned with their theories and the best way to obtain it is by modelling it. Once they have clean data it has the added benefit of highlighting what’s wrong with the “real data” allowing that to be corrected. Once the “real data” is properly corrected it can then be compared to the model data proving the models work.
Why do people find that so hard to understand?
I assume you are not being facetious in your comment (?) If you are, my response here can be ignored. Variation (and inconsistency) is the spice of life. Nature very rarely does things in nice ordered ways according to human perception. This inconsistency of data,with the exception of human and equipment measurement errors, reflects its “realness” and is part of its charm. It means we can stay humble as we don’t know all the factors involved in a data point or cluster It may be nice to see some given data conforming to a perfect binomial probability density function, but this rarely, if ever happens. Error in technique is something we have to try to minimise, but then learn to live with. I disagree that clean data, as you put it, is that which aligns with a theory. The ab initio data is the data, and can never be “cleaner” than it is then (unless our measurement technology improves). Any data which is selected for its alignment to an expectation is in fact ‘dirty’ as it now has an added confirmation bias. Using bias to then haul other data into shipshape order simply introduces a toxic circularity and proves nothing.
Like +1, especially the phrase “toxic circularity”.
Every time I see a Phil. post or a Joel Shore post, I think of Billy Preston’s “Will it go round in circles”. Unlike the deliberately broken wheel of Mosher and Stokes.
In other words, I think jaffa was being facetious.
Agreed Phil, definitely facetious – in a tongue-in-cheek sort of way.
And split into paragraphs too . . . .
Willis, now that you’ve given us reason not to panic over ocean pH changes, maybe you, or someone else, can tackle the good news just out from NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory concerning forests and carbon dioxide. If tropical forests absorb far more carbon dioxide than scientists thought (1.4 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide out of a total global absorption of 2.5 billion) what does that mean? How does that compare to man-made emissions of carbon dioxide?
First year chemistry and I was in the lab cleaning test tubes with concentrated 18 molar SO4, turns our there was a little water left in the test tube that I added the acid to. Small explosion resulting in minor acid burns to my face and eye which left me wearing an eye patch for a few days. Mrs K(short form for a huge Polish name ending in “ski”) told me how lucky I was for if it was [NaOH] I would be blind…smart lady..wore goggles after this…
H2SO4 sorry Mrs K