University of Bern
The Arctic Ocean will take up more CO2 over the 21st century than predicted by most climate models. This additional CO2 causes a distinctly stronger ocean acidification. These results were published in a study by climate scientists from the University of Bern and École normale supérieure in Paris. Ocean acidification threatens the life of calcifying organisms – such as mussels and “sea butterflies” – and can have serious consequences for the entire food chain.
The ocean takes up large amounts of man-made CO2 from the atmosphere. This additional CO2 causes ocean acidification, a process that can already be observed today. Ocean acidification particularly impacts organisms that form calcium carbonate skeletons and shells, such as molluscs, sea urchins, starfish and corals. The Arctic Ocean is where acidification is expected to be greatest.
A study that was recently published in the scientific journal Nature by Jens Terhaar from Bern and Lester Kwiatkowski and Laurent Bopp from the École normale supérieure in Paris shows, that ocean acidification in the Arctic Ocean is likely to be even worse than previously thought. The results show that the smallest of the seven seas will take up 20% more CO2 over the 21st century than previously expected, under the assumption that the atmospheric CO2 concentrations continue to increase. “This leads to substantially enhanced ocean acidification, particularly between 200 and 1000 meters”, explains Jens Terhaar, member of the group for ocean modeling at the Oeschger-Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of Bern. This depth range is an important refuge area for many marine organisms.Consequences for the food chain
Ocean acidification negatively impacts organisms that build calcium carbonate skeletons and shells. In sufficiently acidic waters, these shells become unstable and begin to dissolve. “Our results suggest that it will be more difficult for Arctic organisms to adapt to ocean acidification than previously expected”, says co-author Lester Kwiatkowski. A loss of these organisms is likely to impact the entire Arctic food chain up to fish and marine mammals.New method improves projections
The international research team exploited the large divergence in simulated Arctic Ocean carbon uptake by current climate models. The researchers found a physical relationship across the models between the simulation of present-day Arctic sea surface densities and associated deep-water formation, with greater deep-water formation causing enhanced transport of carbon into the ocean interior and therefore enhanced acidification. Using measurements of Arctic sea surface density the research team was able to correct for biases in the models and reduce the uncertainty associated with projections of future Arctic Ocean acidification.
###
Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research
The Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research (OCCR) is one of the University of Bern’s strategic centres. It is a leading institution for climate research and brings together researchers from fourteen institutes and four faculties. The OCCR carries out interdisciplinary research that is at the forefront of climate science. The Oeschger Centre was founded in 2007 and is named after Hans Oeschger (1927-1998), a pioneer of modern climate research who worked at the University of Bern.
Publication: Terhaar et al.: Emergent constraint on Arctic Ocean acidification in the twenty-first century. Nature, 17. June 2020, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2360-3
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Stop lying about acidification. It will never happen. Let’s be real and call it PH neutralizing tendency.
(jagged line radiating from center) due to acidic ocean waters.
Seems to me if the water was acidic they would melt rather than crack!
If acidification made the shells thinner, then the shells would be easier to crack.
Not that the oceans are becoming more acidic.
The damaged shell should have a milky corroded suface and no sharp edges. The crack is mechanical damage and it, too, should show localized corrosion.
“Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert system.” Why not?
Never worked with these critters, but have with fragile shells, including a real acid freshwater spring. Lots of predators can crack shells. Best they could argue for may be damage to metabolism.
Note that they deliberately only use RPC 8.5 to maximum effect, knowing full well this is NOT the trajectory we are on , neither is it ever likely to be.
There does not seem to be any clear statement about “worse than previously expected” under what conditions. Why is it now worse? Compared to what?
Maybe I missed something but I couldn’t find any information about how they determined that the shell damage really did result from decreasing pH.
The oceans become slightly less alkaline. Shellfish adapt. No news here, just weasel words and outright lies.
Shelled ocean life has persisted through multiple periods of much higher CO2 than today. If one snail with a cracked shell means the end of the world then removing it should solve the problem. No statement of actual ph? Is this a joke?
They persist now in the region of volcanic vents where CO2 concentrations would be far higher than any atmospheric projection, even from the IPCC worst case (RPC 8.5)
Universities across the globe are trashing their long term reputations for the short term money grab of “Climate Change studies”
Now now now…one should not be so Shellfish
And here it was we were recently led to believe that the Arctic could no longer act as a carbon sink as it couldn’t absorb any more CO2
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/06/16/a-carbon-sink-shrinks-in-the-arctic/
How does an ocean that can’t absorb any more CO2 become more acidic?
I’m with you all the way! Just tell me what the pH is currently, and what it was. Don’t give me any alarmist BS!
Since most ocean “acidification” articles equate less alkaline to more acidic, it’s be nice it they’d tell us what pH levels are involved.
There is no mention of pH in the paper, at least I didn’t find.
Let’s face facts – these so-called “scientists” don’t want to mention pH levels, because: (1) it would be apparent that nothing like “acidification” is occurring, and that the “drop” in pH, if any, is currently at best minuscule; (2) if they dared to predict actual pH levels with whatever data they accumulated, they could be challenged and proven fools. Can’t have that, you know.
Larry, it is also very difficult to measure pH accurately today. The amount they are measuring is a drop in average pH of the oceans from 8.2 to 8.1 in 250 years!! This is well beyond the error of measurements taken 250 years ago.
https://niwa.co.nz/news/investigating-ocean-acidification
This is why they are mum in their reports about details because people with no scientific knowledge would be critical. They disingenuously always report that this is a 26% increase in H+ concentration without pointing out that the scale covers many 1000s of % H+ concentration range.
‘Acidification’ is therefore a myth. They also mindlessly take no account of closeness to shore in sampling where rivers and water shed from paved cities on the coast add copious quantities of water of pH ~7 to the seawater.
As pH varies with temperature, it is very important to include the temperature and the Kw for water at that temperature. We were taught that human blood salts and pH are very similar to seawater. The salts seem right but our blood is pH 7.4 and the ocean is 8.4. Wait, what? How can that be?
The oceans are colder and the Kw, dissociation constant, for water is less at colder temperatures, at 10^-16, that normal, at 10^-14. Neutral pH at our (room) temperature is 7 but at seawater temps it’s 8. So, our blood is 0.4 pH unit above neutrality just like seawater. It works!
Last time I looked CO2 is needed to form carbonate (CO3+) shells.
Gary Pearse,
pH measuring with glass electrodes in the past was not accurate enough to measure any change in the oceans, but modern colorimetric measurements can measure pH to 0.01 unit in continuous measurements on sea down to 0.001 pH unit in lab samples.
Fortunately the past pH measurements are not lost either, as one can calculate pH from other measurements (total alkalinity, dissolved inorganic carbon,…).
See e.g. Rérolle
Calling it “Ocean Neutralization” doesn’t do much for the grant application.
University of Bernie?
If a common sense revolution ever sweeps over the Western democracies, I hope these university people are prosecuted for misappropriation of public funds.
Carbonate dissolution is very strongly dependent upon water depth. At what water depth did that poor little pteropod suffer damage to his shell?
Do the authors of the article even know what the carbonate compensation depth is, and at what depth it occurs in the Arctic Ocean?
They generally hang out in the first approximate -40 feet. The damage to the shell probably occurred at +12 feet when they emptied their net.
The article does not mention once pH.
So what, the pH will drop from 8.3 to 8.2?
Another flase scare story.
Yes.. Ramping up for AR 6, from the IPPC next year ?
Oh.. I forgot.
It will be worse than we ever thought 🤦♂️
The title implies that ocean acidification is NOW worse than expected, (by previous models), implying that some actual physical measurements (pH?) have been taken. Actually, no such measurements have been taken, and this article is just reporting another model. The pH changes, if they ever occur, would be so small as to be impossible to detect. pH is notoriously difficult to measure to the degree of accuracy, (+/- .0001 pH), this model is implying, and that’s even in the controlled conditions of a modern laboratory. A super-accurate pH measurement is subject to so many uncontrolled and poorly understood variables, (temperature, wind conditions, pressure, ionic strength, etc.), that measurement on site in the Arctic is impossible.
and another question: what were the conditions under which this poor snail suffered its catastrophic damage?
I would think the shell cracked after being sandwiched between two plates of glass under a microscope.
see Wikipedia … they say that (in a different West Coast study) they put the little guy in a lower pH ‘ocean water’ for a month and a half to see what would happen (surprise, they dissolved most of his shell).
They may have left him in for longer than the month and a half, but they didn’t discuss that.
There was a paper a few years ago that outlined how terrible experimental design on this is. It gave an outline on how to do these lab tests properly. He was a well-known oceanographer. He cited some experiments (kindly not identifying who did them) wherein an unreal low pH was used in a 1-2 cubic meter tank as a way to account for a long period of natural addition of increased higher hydrogen ion presence.
He also criticised not having other associated fauna flora present and the closed system nature of the lab tank. You cant have live creatures taking lime and CO2 out of a small tank with limited resources to build their shells.
My own criticism of the closed system is that Ca^++ is contantly being added by rivers, by mafic volcanics, seafloor spreading, and preciptated calcium carbonate and dead cocolithospore plankton shells settling in the sea that are redesolved below the Carbonate Compensation zone at~4000m.
As with the covid crisis, we witness again the nonsense of model-derived projections being presented as facts requiring action….when the models have not been confirmed empirically.
They are wrong so often that real scientists need to start rebelling against use of models for predictions of complex, often chaotic, systems….like the weather and epidemics of novel infectious organisms.
The model says by 2050 the snails will need at least 200,000,000 ventilators.
Two lies in one headline:
“Ocean acidification”, like other Alarmist claims is completely false
“Worse than previously expected”- Please, that’s right up there in BS land with “”here” is warming twice as fast as any any other place”. Worse BS than previously published.
1) So much for previously settled science.
2) What is the mechanism for this alleged 20% increase in CO2 absorbtion?
3) 20% is not that much, it’s probably less than the error margins for our understanding of ph levels through out the oceans.
4) They haven’t actually proven that rising atmospheric CO2 levels are causing any harm in the oceans, yet they take it as granted that this model projected 20% increase, will make that predicted damage worse.
5) Increasing nothing by 20% still doesn’t arrive at a scary scenario.
In order:
1) Yup!
2) No kidding, they rely on the sea ice disapearing to expose more sea surface. This added sea surface is modeled to do the extra absorption.
3) Our understanding of pH levels in the oceans is pretty good, actually. We know that pH varies all over the place, sometimes as much as a full pH unit on the day/night cycle. Then there are ocean basins, seasons, temperature, biological activity, and Climate Scientists running around with poorly calibrated pH meters.
4) True, but they modeled it, which is even better. Remember – Correlation does not equal Causation, but Models Are Proof.
5) But it does! It Is Worse Than … (Oh never mind.)
That should do it.
You would think that that the global ocean during the long term glacial advances when ocean temps were at their lowest would have then become so ‘acidified’ that the food chain would have collapsed during the last 2.58 million years when the Pleistocene epoch began with the Quaternary glaciation waxing and waning in both hemispheres. Obviously the global ocean food chain didn’t collapse and the good Earth has seen a lot more oscillation in ocean Ph, including wild swings in ocean levels and atmospheric temps between interglacials and the more permanent feature the last 2.6 million years, which has been a full blown ice age the majority of that time. This little bit of warming we have had the last 200 years, which has mostly been natural variation, is even less warm than previous warmer periods such as the Medieval, Roman, Bronze and the Holocene Optimum itself when the most recent glacial advance has retreated. Climate science is becoming more and more deceitful every year. It is no wonder that climate change and global warming is at the bottom of real concerns for the silent majority.
Oh, yes, that reminds me. pH is a measure of hydrogen ion concentration. How does CO2 affect that? Well, it combines with H2O to form a weak acid, H2CO3 which then forms the hydrogen ion. Is that right?
Jim,
No, it is activity, not concentration.
Quite different in solutions with other dissolved species like sea water has.
Geoff S
Oh.. I forgot.
It will be worse than we ever thought 🤦♂️
It’s the new Acid Rain Scare except smaller.
Nope, my sarcastic response was wrong.
From Wikepedia (same photo) “The shell of a pteropod was immersed in ocean water with the projected pH level that the water will reach by the year 2100. After a month and a half in the water, the shell had almost completely dissolved.[9]”
So they tortured the little bugger on purpose … where is PETA and the anti animal testing zealots?
(and the reference [9] is to a California study, not Atlantic study; and it’s Wikepedia so it all could be garbage)
Excellent Mr M, here’s an acidifying article from National Geographic 2014 with the same image 🙂
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/5/140502-ocean-snail-shell-dissolving-acidification-climate-change-science/
Ocean Acidification Chipping Away at Snail Shells
Corrosive waters are damaging the shells of marine snails off the U.S. West Coast.
BY JANE J. LEE, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
PUBLISHED MAY 4, 2014
“Ocean acidification isn’t proceeding at a snail’s pace, (ROFL) says new research
The study finds that corrosive water off the U.S. West Coast is dissolving the shells of a marine snail, also known as a sea butterfly, that is a key player in the coastal food chain.”
Can’t be many of them left by now.
I skimmed the (reference 9) study.
One of the points made was in the ‘study’ was that, hopefully, the pteropod could be used as a proxy for CO2 environmental damage by seeing how they manage, given the future and ongoing ‘acidification’.
My guess is that they have not compiled any (significant) base line data yet, since it would be too difficult/expensive to measure all the other contributing variables.
DonM: So they tortured the little bugger on purpose
Nope. They tortured nothing. They introduced “the shell of a pteropod”, not a living pteropod. Which means that the shell dissolution proves nothing. Living pteropods regenerate their shells.
I bet that if you introduce a fish’s corpse in any water it will also experience some degradation after a month and a half. Yet fish like to live in the water, and do so pretty well.
‘Ocean acidification’ – an oxymoron (a term used by morons)
Looks to me like a piece of fluff on the shell. The image is from Wiki and the caption just says “Unhealthy pteropod showing effects of ocean acidification”. A little ‘harmless’ journalistic license from EurekAlert!. This is a modelling study, move along, nothing to see here.
Has anyone ever reported, or even seen, acidic ocean water? If so, I have not seen the report.
Yes, it is the small yellowish area when you pee while swimming.
Nope. Urea is basic.
jimbrock
It depends on what you have been eating and how well hydrated one is. My VA workup shows that the normal range for urine is 5.0 to 8.0!
Urine gets much of its acid from organic acids generated by the metabolism of meat. Many vegans/vegetarians have higher urinary pH readings and are susceptible to UTIs
Strongly acidic ocean water is very common. I used to see it all the time.
Step 1) Collect your ocean water sample for analysis.
Step 2) Preserve the sample by “pickling” it. That is to say adding a big slug of concentrated nitric acid (HNO3) to it. This halt all biological activity and prevents the precipitation of the metals present.
The biology people and oceanography people were carting big plastic jugs of acidified seawater back to the labs all the time.
(I hope this is what you meant. Just trying to help.)
In 2016-17 I always took along a pH meter on field work expeditions. Ocean water was tested along the east and west coasts of North America, the Fiji islands, the Persian Gulf off Qatar, and the east coast of Portugal and showed normal oceanic pH, 8.1-8.3. I never got any reading below 8.1.
The people claiming “ocean acidification” should be ashamed of themselves! This is not science in any sense of the word, just a shameful, model-based, ploy to convince the gullible that something really bad is happening because of evil CO2.
(Followed by total bafflegab.)
And for our next trick we will be making silk purses from sow’s ears.
Also how was the sea butterfly’s shell damaged by acidic water in an ocean that is still alkaline? More EurekAlert alarmist nonsense.
pH of 8 it isnt acid. It isnt becoming an acid. Less strong tea is not more strong beer. Tea and beer are not the same thing.
Many studies made by alarmists include the warning…………..” could have serious consequences for the entire food chain” It is wonderful how they worry about things that MAY happen but they completely ignore the massacre happening NOW by wind mill farms and solar panels. What is it/// hypocrisy, intellectual dishonesty, stupidity, greed………. or a combination everything???
Two days ago we had this:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/06/16/a-carbon-sink-shrinks-in-the-arctic/
“As carbon dioxide accumulates in the surface layer of the water from melting ice, the amount of carbon dioxide this area of the Arctic Ocean can take from the atmosphere will continue to shrink,”
And now we have this:
“The results show that the smallest of the seven seas will take up 20% more CO2 over the 21st century than previously expected”
Less CO2 uptake in the Arctic Ocean = bad news.
More CO2 uptake in the Arctic Ocean = bad news.
Settled science?
In fact “bad news” is the only thing in Climate Science that is actually settled.
“The Arctic Ocean will take up more CO2 over the 21st century than predicted by most climate models. This additional CO2 causes a distinctly stronger ocean acidification.”
Do some people fear drinking orange juice?
Though all climate models have wrongly predicted everything.
Merely because all models don’t predict anything in future.
Models projecting what in the future.
Is like the question what do think will happen tomorrow.
Anyone can give such a model, and roughly anyone might roughly be right about what will happen
tomorrow. Ie, they probably be living on Earth. The sun will exist. Etc.
Anyhow, ocean solidification is not vaguely a problem to worry about.
And worrying about CO2 effecting it, just means you are stupid.
No one has any excuse to worry about a gas that plant food and is in atmosphere at such a low concentration.
We living in Ice Age. In our Ice Age there is a lower concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere.
A reason for the low concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is because we have a cold ocean.
Our cold ocean is also why we are in an Ice Age.
We have been in this Ice Age for more than a million years. And we will probably remain in this Ice Age for more than million years.
The warmer part of the Ice Age is called an interglacial period.
This interglacial period will eventually end or become a glaciation period.
In glaciation period will have even less CO2 in the atmosphere than we have now, and the CO2 plant food becoming more scarce, will slow down plant growth.
And this because during glaciation period the ocean will become colder than it is now.
We have been having a long cooling period for thousands of year.
And that is what happens when entering a glaciation period- a long slightly cooling trend that continues for thousands of years.
Do the steep dives in a graph tell different story? No, look time scales of your graph.
{Also the are graphs are probably air temperature, and not the ocean’s temperature. }
Now. obviously it’s true that we are recovering from the Little Ice Age.
But if instead you were in the Little Ice Age, there lots of “proof” that the “glaciation period is very near”.
The story changes when instead continuation advancing glaciers of Little Ice Age, they start retreat rapidly. Which happened about 100 years ago.
So now, with our recent warming of last 150 to 200 years, the false idea that very soon we would entering a glaciation {which never happen quickly} is less evident.
Now get stories/fantasies being replaced with Earth going to become like Venus, and polar bears going die.
But regardless of fantasies, we still heading toward the next glaciation period. Because we till have a cold ocean and therefore, we are still in a Ice Age.
I would guess, ocean solidification delusions are a replacement delusion for rapid warming that didn’t occur- a a stupid psychotic admission that there isn’t a problem with Earth becoming like Venus.
Should we pity them?
It seems if so, we should also pity the pathetic Peak Oil freaks.
But as a note, it seems we are past Peak Coal.
But of course, not due to a world shortage of coal, rather more similar to the
Peak Horse Manure.
And while topic, curious if we had past the peak of burning down the trees
for “Biomass”. Due to exponential growth of global government corruption- it’s hard
to predict.
They’re just making it up as they go along to get the scary headlines. These people are indistinguishable from racketeers.
All sorts of “sophisticated” computer models are used by these fools, yet they seem completely oblivious of the simple physical chemistry of pH buffering by carbonate and bicarbonate ions in seawater.
Just what is the solubility of an acid gas in an infinitely buffered alkaline solution?
Asking for a friend.