Our Dying Oceans
Acidification Threatens the Entire Marine Ecosystem
SOURCE: Wikimedia Commons
A growing body of research demonstrates that global waters are absorbing massive amounts of carbon dioxide, threatening species at the bottom of the food chain. So why are we still paying so little attention to climate change’s elephant in the room? Above: Change in sea surface pH caused by anthropogenic CO2 emissions between the 1700s and 1990s.
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Extinctions. Droughts. Melting glaciers. Even for those of us not steeped in the nitty gritty of climate change, it’s been almost impossible to avoid the ongoing news coverage of scientists’ increasingly gloomy prognostications about our planet’s future. Look past the blaring headlines, however, and many will tell you that far too little attention is still being paid to the real elephant in the room: ocean acidification.
The unprecedented influx of anthropogenic CO2 emissions since the 1800s has fundamentally altered the equation.
Starting in the late 1950s with the groundbreaking research of Roger Revelle and Charles Keeling, scientists have long been aware of the essential role played by the ocean in mitigating the impact of elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) levels. Ice core record measurements of carbon dioxide taken mid-century showed that atmospheric concentrations had remained about constant for several thousand years until the rapid onset of industrialization during the 1800s, after which they began their meteoric rise. Revelle’s work was instrumental in demonstrating that a large fraction of the gas remained in the atmosphere. At the same time, it also suggested that a significant amount was being absorbed by the ocean—a realization that would lead him to conclude that, over the long term, it would permanently change the chemistry of seawater. A number of oceanographer-led global surveys completed in 2004 determined that the ocean had absorbed nearly half of all carbon emitted since the start of the Industrial Revolution. Other studies have found that around a third of fossil fuel-derived CO2 is currently taken up by the ocean [1].
Upon entering the ocean, a portion of CO2 reacts with water to form carbonic acid, a weak acid; the other portion stays in dissolved form. Some fraction of the acid will then release hydrogen ions into solution, yielding either bicarbonate or carbonate ions, while a smaller fraction will remain as carbonic acid. The relative proportion of these three forms of dissolved inorganic carbon—carbon dioxide, bicarbonate ions and carbonate ions—acts as a natural buffer, called the “carbonate buffer,” by absorbing small pH changes induced by the increase in hydrogen ion concentration. The pH scale, which ranges from 0 to 14, is used by scientists to measure a solution’s acidity or basicity—the lower the value, the more acidic the solution. The scale is logarithmic, so a one-pH unit drop corresponds to a ten-fold increase in the hydrogen ion concentration, making seawater more acidic. With an average pH of 8.1, seawater is considered slightly basic, or alkaline.
This buffering system has helped keep the ocean’s pH in check for thousands of years. However, the unprecedented influx of anthropogenic CO2 emissions since the 1800s has fundamentally altered the equation, threatening to overwhelm the delicate balance maintained by this system and tipping the ocean into a period of prolonged acidification. The problem is simple: as increasing amounts of atmospheric CO2 are absorbed by surface waters, more hydrogen ions are formed—which leads to an overall decrease in seawater pH. Many of these hydrogen ions will combine with carbonate ions, forming bicarbonate ions and reducing the concentration of carbonate ions. The net effect is to weaken the carbonate buffer, rendering it less effective at keeping slight pH variations in check.
By some estimates, all of the planet’s corals could disappear by century’s end if present trends continue.
Researchers believe this process lowered the oceans’ average pH by 0.1 since the pre-industrial era—equivalent to a 30 percent increase in the ocean’s average hydrogen ion concentration [2]. A recent analysis postulated that pH levels might fall by as much as 0.5 units by 2100, which would be equivalent to a three-fold increase in the hydrogen ion concentration since pre-industrial times [3]. The impacts of ocean acidification are already being felt closer to home: a report published just this past month in Science showed evidence for the upwelling of “acidified” water onto the Pacific continental shelf between central Canada and northern Mexico. Seasonal upwelling, which brings nutrient-rich deep waters up to the surface, is a natural phenomenon in this region and one that is critical for many developing marine organisms.
“So what?” you may ask. Why should I care about this when other climate-induced phenomena like heat waves and droughts seem much more urgent? Diminishing the ocean’s capacity to absorb CO2 is no small problem in itself, because without the ocean serving as a carbon sink, more carbon dioxide will have no where to go but into the atmosphere. But aside from that, what worries scientists most about ocean acidification is that it will inhibit certain organisms’ ability to produce calcium carbonate shells—to the extent that they would have great difficulty growing. And not just any organisms: those, like phytoplankton, which support entire food webs by acting as the ocean’s primary producers (like plants in terrestrial ecosystems). Without them—or with their numbers greatly reduced—many populations and ecosystems could simply collapse. Moreover, oceanographers are deeply concerned about the potential impact of acidification on corals. These tiny organisms, which secrete calcium carbonate skeletons that, over time, accumulate to form large reef assemblages, could become more prone to so-called “bleaching” episodes—in which algae that form symbiotic associations with the corals (and give them their colors) are expelled, depriving the latter of a critical source of nutrients. Worse, the precipitous drop in carbonate ion concentration could make many regions of the ocean acidic enough to dissolve calcium carbonate structures [4]. Corals, phytoplankton and other calcifying organisms would be unable to survive under such “undersaturated” conditions. By some estimates, all of the planet’s corals could disappear by century’s end if present trends continue. The continued uptake of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere will cause these areas to expand until only a sliver of the ocean’s surface layer remains inhabitable.
That’s not to say that certain species won’t also benefit. Indeed, a few recent studies have demonstrated that some phytoplankton species may thrive under conditions of elevated CO2 concentrations. Larger organisms, like seagrasses, use dissolved carbon dioxide directly and could therefore also experience gains. While the current state of research may be ambiguous in some areas, it is clear that the overall picture is decidedly grim. Though more studies are needed, scientists are concerned that acidification is taking place at such speed that we—let alone marine species—will have little time to adapt.
Jeremy Jacquot is a graduate student in marine environmental biology at the University of Southern California and is the Los Angeles correspondent for TreeHugger.com.
Notes
[1] Doney, S.C. 2006. The dangers of ocean acidification. Scientific American: 58 – 65.
[2] Brewer, P.G. 1997. Ocean chemistry of the fossil fuel CO2 signal: the haline signal of “business as usual”. Geophys. Res. Lett. 24: 1367 – 1369.
[3] Caldeira, K. and Wickett, M.E. 2003. Anthropogenic carbon and ocean pH. Nature 425: 365.
[4] The Royal Society. 2005. Ocean acidification due to increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide.
Comments on this article
What is lacking here is some ray of hope. No amount of doomsday warnings without a way to duck and cover are of any use. Better yet don’t duck and cover get to work to restore the oceans.
Carbon Dioxide Emissions Threaten An Ocean Apocalypse Now
Many of us who love the ocean are likely reading with alarm the news reports on the impact of CO2 from the burning of fossil fuels that is creating ocean acidification and a survival crisis for our coral reefs. In most of those reports the emphasis is given to the threat to and ideas for saving the beautiful coral reefs by reducing emissions, our carbon footprint. While it is good to reduce the fossil fuel and other green house gas emissions we are all contributing, I beg to differ with the position that reducing our global carbon footprint will help save our ocean bathing beauties, the reefs. It’s not that I don’t fully support reducing our carbon footprint, I am rather more concerned about the more potent role of the deadly dose of anthropogenic (fossil) CO2 already in the air on its way to our surface ocean waters. Those hundreds of billions of tonnes of CO2 from the fossil fuel age burning, the bulk of which we’ve emitted in the past 75 years, is a massive carbon bomb already airborne and slowly but surely dissolving (exploding) into the surface ocean. By most accounts CO2 in the atmosphere takes on the order of 200 years to equilibrate with the surface ocean. As it dissolves in the surface ocean it makes the water more acidic. The pH (acidity) drop of 30% that we’ve been recording of recent is just the proverbial tip of the dry-iceberg.
As the surface ocean absorbs the rest of this deadly dose, regardless of whether we emit more which we surely will do, the acidification process already destined to occur is more than sufficient to change ocean ecology in far wider and disastrous fashion than merely scalding the bathing beauty reefs at the shore. In fact the devastating effects CO2 has on the ocean is not proceeding only via acidification, H2O+CO2=H2CO3 (carbonic acid), there is a secondary reaction wherein CO2 is enhancing the greeness of the planets dry lands. This added greenery is is a major benefit our high and rising CO2 delivers to droughty grasses who are losing less water via evaporation and transpiration as they take CO2 from the enriched air, are remaining green and growing bushier each spring, and as such are superior ground cover thus reducing topsoil loss in the wind. Tragically that dust in the wind is the major source of vital mineral micronutrients for the open ocean. Prophetically it seems, all we really are is dust in the wind.
So as our reef beauties cry out and dissolve like Dorothy’s wicked witch in our acidifying oceans, the acidification will certainly continue for at least another century, unabated even if we never emit another molecule of fossil CO2 into the air. At the same time as the oceans suffer this chemical shock treatment, akin to those we give our swimming pools, they will continue as well to lose their phyto-plankton and photosynthetic capacity to counter this onslaught. The loss of net primary productivity (ocean greeness), NPP, is reportedly 17% in the North Atlantic, 26% in the North Pacific, and 50% in the sub-tropical tropical oceans. Last spring a scientific report of a transect of the Eastern Pacific between French Polynesia and Chile reported it found “the clearest water on Earth. In the middle of the Pacific the waters were of such clarity that they even exceeded the clarity of the former record holding lakes which lie beneath a mile of ice on the Antarctic continent, in the cold and dark for a million years. Clear water is lifeless water and while it may be a scientific curiosity under the Antarctic icecap it is a horrifying finding in what should be an ocean murky with an abundance of life.
We can find the fundamental proof of the depth and breadth of this problem by considering it from the point of view of basic chemical thermodynamics. Indeed we have expended a hundred terrawatts or so burning fossil carbon to put that deadly dose of CO2 into our atmosphere and ocean. The present human energy use continues at about 12 terrawatts per year today. No trivial energy savings will serve to counter the certain first principals chemical effects of this burning of fossil carbon as it impacts the biggest and most sensitive ecosystem on this small blue planet, the oceans. We can still trust in what the Second Law of Thermodynamics teaches us in that one must balance chemical equations energetically. If we are to address a problem created by terrawatts of energy we must devote terrawatts of energy for the cure. In this case those curative terrawatts better be emission free or we are lost.
So where is there a source of emission free terrawatts of curative power we can devote to saving the oceans and help restore the balance of Nature? It is of course ONLY available from ocean photosynthesis and therein lies the course we must chart to restore our oceans. We must not simply imagine the damage we’ve prescribed can be ignored by staring only ahead and not behind. We must not only take actions that assume the present mortally wounded state of the oceans is something we can’t deal with. No mere conservation ethic or effort will suffice, we are far to far over the tipping point for that to work. We must replenish and restore ocean plant life and photosynthesis for there in the vast living ocean expanse the terrawatts of solar power, captured by living green plankton, can be found and used to compete with the H2O+CO2=H2CO3 reaction. There in lies our only hope if we act now to assist the ocean plants, phyto-plankton, to convert CO2+Sunlight in the ocean to life instead of death. Without replenished mineral micronutrients, without our determined efforts to administer the antidote, life in the oceans, and on this small blue planet, will surely not remain as it is. It will revert to the cyanobacterial; state the oceans were in 600 million years ago before green plants made abundant oxygen and higher life forms, including ourselves, evolved.
If you are a religious person you might liken what we need to do as seeking absolution for our sins of emission by our acts of contrition and ecorestoration, otherwise the path to perdition is that of dissolution of those CO2 sins into dying oceans.
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