NOAA Headquarters
In first-of-its-kind research, NOAA scientists and academic partners used 100 years of microscopic shells to show that the coastal waters off California are acidifying twice as fast as the global ocean average — with the seafood supply in the crosshairs.
California coastal waters contain some of our nation’s more economically valuable fisheries, including salmon, crabs and shellfish. Yet, these fisheries are also some of the most vulnerable to the potential harmful effects of ocean acidification on marine life. That increase in acidity is caused by the ocean absorbing excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
100 years and 2,000 shells later
In the new study published in the journal Nature Geoscience, scientists examined nearly 2,000 shells of microscopic animals called foraminifera by taking core samples from the seafloor off Santa Barbara and measuring how the shells of these animals have changed over a century.
Every day, the shells of dead foraminifera rain down on the ocean floor and are eventually covered by sediment. Layers of sediment containing shells form a vertical record of change. The scientists looked back through time, layer by layer, and measured changes in thickness of the shells.
“By measuring the thickness of the shells, we can provide a very accurate estimate of the ocean’s acidity level when the foraminifera were alive,” said lead author Emily Osborne, who used this novel technique to produce the longest record yet created of ocean acidification using directly measured marine species. She measured shells within cores that represented deposits dating back to 1895.
The fossil record also revealed an unexpected cyclical pattern: Though the waters increased their overall acidity over time, the shells revealed decade-long changes in the rise and fall of acidity. This pattern matched the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, a natural warming and cooling cycle. Human-caused carbon dioxide emissions are driving ocean acidification, but this natural variation also plays an important role in alleviating or amplifying ocean acidification.
“During the cool phases of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, strengthened winds across the ocean drive carbon dioxide-rich waters upward toward the surface along the West Coast of the U.S.,” said Osborne, a scientist with NOAA’s Ocean Acidification Program. “It’s like a double whammy, increasing ocean acidification in this region of the world.”
Scientists hope to build on the new research to learn more about how changes in ocean acidification may be affecting other aspects of the marine ecosystem.
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Seltzer water (plain carbonated water) is slightly acidic (ph 3-4) has 5740 ppm of C02 in it, and lots of bubbles. Source: Google. I have a REALLY hard time believing an atmosphere containing 400 ppm C02 coming into contact with an ocean would have any discernible effect on its ph.
A NOAA demonstration film on Youtube of shells at low Ph used Acetic acid. A CSIRO clip I saw on the ABC used dilute Hydrochloric. Calcium Acetate and Calcium Chloride are soluble. Calcium Carbonate is not. Carbon Dioxide is scavenged from air by bubbling through a Calcium Hydroxide solution which precipitates Calcium Carbonate. If Carbonic Acid dissolved any Calcium Carbonate it would immediately re-precipitate. High school chemistry.
BOGUS demonstrations of BOGUS science.
Must be all that human waste washing into the ocean.
This recent study says too much is being made of a local situation.
From Autonomous seawater pCO2 and pH time series from 40 surface buoys and the emergence of anthropogenic trends published at Earth System Science Data.
https://www.earth-syst-sci-data.net/11/421/2019/
Conclusions
This product provides a unique data set for a range of users including providing a more accessible format for non-carbon chemists interested in surface ocean pCO2 and pH time series data. These 40 time series locations represent a range of ocean, coastal, and coral reef regimes that exhibit a broad spectrum of daily to interannual variability. These time series can be used as a tool for estimating climatologies, assessing natural variability, and constraining models to improve predictions of trends in these regions.
However, at this time, only two time series data sets (WHOTS and Stratus) are long enough to estimate long-term anthropogenic trends. ToE estimates show that at all but these two sites, an anthropogenic signal cannot be discerned at a statistically significant level from the natural variability of surface seawater pCO2 and pH. If and when that date of trend detection is attained, it is essential to seasonally detrend data prior to any trend analyses.
Even though the ToE provided are conservative estimates, data users should still use caution in interpreting that an anthropogenic trend is distinct from decadal-scale ocean forcing that is not well characterized. Future work should be directed at improving upon these ToE estimates in regions where other data, proxies, or knowledge about decadal forcing are more complete.
https://rclutz.wordpress.com/2019/12/17/2019-ocean-ph-spin/
They use shell thickness to measure acidity? I smell a model here. Why not have actual pH measurements?
Because those wouldn’t be changing twice as fast as expected
The paper is absurd, since the ocean waters already have 99% of free CO2 of the ecosystem immersed in it.
All of the ten sources that I have found say that over 99% of all near-surface carbon is now, after 500 million years, contained in limestone and sediments. It got there from the CO2 dissolved in sea water. Why is everybody ignoring this, which is the most important carbon cycle?
Is this yet another study that stinks of knowing the results you want and creating the data to support the results?
Asking instead of stating.
Regards,
Bob
Pray tell, just how “acid” are these waters now? Why don’t we get some measurements and reveal the numbers?
Oh I forgot we don’t need any stinking measurements – we’ll use a model instead…never mind that the ocean water was alkaline before, is alkaline now, and probably will remain alkaline for billions of years until our Sun becomes a red giant and expands its diameter out to where Earth’s orbit is now, and all water will be boiled away…
“Unexpected”? Horst schist!
Flinders Reef is part of the GBR.
I saw a talk by Willie Soon once where he showed photographs of the results of an actual side by side comparison of ocean flora and fauna growth rates under 2 different atmospheric CO2 concentrations.
Two tanks held the same plants and bivalve shell creatures and crabs and lobsters, etc. One of those tanks was in a 400 ppm CO2 environment and the other was under DOUBLE @ur momisugly 800 ppm CO2.
Results: The growth in the high CO2 tank was nearly twice the rate as in the low CO2 tank…similar to terrestrial growth rate increases seen with elevated CO2 levels in greenhouses. These plants and animals are mostly MADE out of cabonaceous materials, so those results should be expected. More CO2 = more food.
I have another problem with the study in this article. Look at maps showing ocean pH levels, and you will see coastal ocean pH levels that are all over the place…showing especially low pH near river outlets. This study was in coastal areas.
Too fracking funny! Here’s the Nature Geoscience paper:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-019-0499-z
The emphasis is on the decadal variability.
Osborne, E.B., Thunell, R.C., Gruber, N. et al. “Decadal variability in twentieth-century ocean acidification in the California Current Ecosystem”. Nat. Geosci. (2019) doi:10.1038/s41561-019-0499-z
The data are available here:
https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.909101
A new “tipping point”.
Clearly, California must be evacuated and cleansed with fire.
With “The Big One” seemingly at their doorstep, this should save dozens of lives, but surely one life is enough.
20 shells per year to tell you the PH of the entire ocean.
Man, how many millions of dollars did this study cost us?
astonerii
It sounds like a self-funded senior project.
It’s off the shellf.
It’s a long time since I was at school, but I’m pretty sure that I was taught that shellfish grow their calcium carbonate shells by absorbing CO2 from the water. But now, increased availability makes it harder to make shells? Who’d a thunk it…
Not exactly. All other factors held equal, increasing the CO2 saturation will reduce the calcite and aragonite saturation states. Increasing CO2 saturation in water causes more calcium carbonate to become soluble calcium bicarbonate.
CaCO3 + CO2 + H2O → Ca(HCO3)2
However, if you add calcium, CaCO3 precipitation will increase. If you raise the water temperature, CaCO3 precipitation will increase.
A lot of factors affect this process.
David
You said, “A lot of factors affect this process.” Indeed! Not the least of which is that calcifiers can change the pH at the growth face with the expenditure of energy. That is why they have an optimal range of pH for growth, which probably reflects the prevailing pH at the time the organisms evolved. After growing their shells, they can inhibit dissolution by coating the shell with mucous, and with organisms, like gastropods, also add chitin to protect the calcite/aragonite when they live in upwelling coastal environments.
The funniest thing is that the only calcifier that empirical experiments indicate might be challenged by 1,000 ppm CO2, appears to be nearly indestructible in the fossil record… The soft shell clam.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/06/13/the-total-myth-of-ocean-acidification-part-deux-the-scientific-basis/
Seek and ye shall find.
And the things most sought in such science are more funding and fifteen seconds of fame.
Don’t be too hard to the researchers, as they had come to suffer from shell-shock.
“Table 3 shows the different range of pH some countries are implementing. Generally, all
countries use an average range of between 5.0 and 9.0 in freshwater, and 6.5 and 9.0 for
marine, all of which are within the limits of optimum fish production”
http://www.aquaculture.asia/files/PMNQ%20WQ%20standard%202.pdf
From the NOAA link in the article: “Ocean acidification refers to a reduction in the pH of the ocean over an extended period of time, …”
Ocean acidification: Two words, 18 characters
pH reduction: Two words, 11 characters
It is more economical to use the term “pH reduction,” and it is more accurate as to what is happening. Is there any doubt that alarmists are playing word games intended to scare people?
“By measuring the thickness of the shells, we can provide a very accurate estimate of the ocean’s acidity level when the foraminifera were alive, ..”
That claim is not substantiated. The thickness is a proxy for pH, but may be affected by other things such as available nutrients and temperature; the article does acknowledge temperature has an effect. As is usual, I don’t see any statement about the uncertainty between test thickness and inferred pH.
“California coastal waters contain some of our nation’s more economically valuable fisheries, …”
That is because upwelling brings nutrients to the surface where photosynthesizers can utilize them. The upwelling, of water that is hundreds of years old, also brings rapid and strong changes in pH and dissolved oxygen. The Monterey Bay Aquarium has lost specimens from anoxic water and water with pH approaching neutrality within a matter of minutes. The aquarium now monitors all the intake water to avoid such problems.
If I Recall Correctly, the last “It’s turning to acid — and we’re all gonna die” incident in the Eastern Pacific had to do with mass mortalities in oyster beds in the Pacific Northwest and was eventually attributed to increased upwelling of acidic organic debris.
I got curious about this and spent an hour or two on the Internet. The chemistry is a bit complex and I haven’t used mine for about six decades, but I think what might be happening is something along the line of. Dead organic material settles to the ocean bottom in an anoxic zone. Microbes then slowly combine any Iron in the detritus to form Iron Pyrite (FeS2) using Sulfur from Sulfate ions which are reasonably abundant in sea water. If upwelling then moves the Pyrite to a region where there is some free Oxygen, a different microbial community can convert the Pyrite,Oxygen, and some water molecules to form insoluble Iron hydroxide and Sulfuric Acid. The Iron Hydroxide precipitates and the Sulfuric Acid stays in solution. Result: decreased pH with no involvement of CO2.
That could easily be wrong, but it’s probably worth considering.
Assuming facts not in evidence.
(Or is she saying what Man does falls under what is “natural”!?)
She’ll acknowledge that shell thickness has varied over geologic time, but, suddenly (geologically speaking) Man’s, and only Man’s CO2, since 1895 is responsible for this tiny bit of the thinning cycle?
I think Grrrreta said she’s taking a break from “Climate Activism”. Maybe she should too?
They had me till” caused by the ocean absorbing excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.”. Wow. Any of these Rocket Surgeons ever operate a saltwater aquarium. Hell, cut them some slack, any of them ever run a freshwater aquarium? A gold fish bowl? Just, wow.
2hotel9
Back about 1970 I had a cold, 15-gallon salt-water aquarium in the garage. It was stocked with just about everything you could find in a California tide pool. It was doing well until I introduced a small octopus. It quickly ate virtually everything in the tank. Eventually, there was only a small monkey-faced eel and the octopus in opposite corners. It was just before finals and I didn’t have time to go to the coast to re-stock everything so I gave it to a friend who was a diver and had a larger tank. The bottom line is that it was harder to maintain a biological balance than a chemical balance.
Those who think assume that constructing a stable, sustainable artificial environment is a solved problem should look into the late 20th century Biosphere-2 experiment. While it wasn’t a total failure, it wasn’t exactly a rousing success. Not only were there sustainability problems, it turns out that they mis-estimated what they needed to do to maintain a life sustaining atmosphere. They eventually had to breach the containment so the folks in the biosphere could breath.
But if we couldn’t build a truly self-sustainable environment on a three acre site in Arizona, doesn’t that suggest potential problems for Moon bases (which can probably be resupplied on an emergency basis from Earth) and especially Mars bases (which mostly can’t)? Well yeah, it might.
There are many articles on-line about the project. Here’s one of the more optimistic. https://dartmouthalumnimagazine.com/articles/biosphere-2-what-really-happened
Don K
We do have some experience with the effort in the form of running a large fleet of submarines, and the moon missions. But, we should be prepared for some surprises.
Lack of nutrients from all of the dammed rivers would be my guess.
Tiny shells of foraminifera?
Over 100 years?
No mention of their error bounds; which I assume are very large.
Of course, the gross assumption that whatever changes NOAA detected were all mankind’s fault for acidifying the oceans…
Yeah, this fits right in with their ocean joules and using shipboard temperatures to ‘correct’ surface temperatures…
“NOAA scientists and academic partners used 100 years of microscopic shells to show that the coastal waters off California are acidifying twice as fast as the global ocean average”
Proof that ocean acidification is an agw thing. Effects of the atmosphere on the ocean would be more uniform. There are significant hydrocarbon seeps off the coast of california. Two links.
https://tambonthongchai.com/2019/08/27/carbonflows/
https://tambonthongchai.com/2019/12/14/ocean-acidification-2019/
The problem with climate research is the need and the presumption of agw effects in research – a form of circular reasoning into which climate science is trapped by their reliance on climate models.