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Ocean Acidity 10 times faster

Page history last edited by PBworks 15 years, 3 months ago

Oceans acidifying much faster than was thought: study

 

Nov. 26, 2008

Courtesy University of Chicago

and World Science staff

 

The oceans are becoming more acidic, and much faster than pre­vi­ously thought, sci­en­tists say. The pro­cess, a pos­sible threat to some ocean life, seems to be linked with ris­ing lev­els of at­mos­pher­ic gas­es that are blamed for glob­al warm­ing, ac­cord­ing to the re­search­ers.

 

Univers­ity of Chi­ca­go scientists de­tailed the new find­ings in a pa­per pub­lished on­line by the re­search jour­nal Pro­ceed­ings of the Na­tional Acad­e­my of Sci­ences Nov. 24. The study is based on 24,519 mea­sure­ments of ocean ac­id­ity span­ning eight years.

 

Dur­ing that time, “the ac­id­ity in­creased more than 10 times faster” than cli­mate change mod­els and oth­er stud­ies had pre­dicted, said the uni­ver­s­ity’s J. Tim­o­thy Woot­ton, lead au­thor of the stu­dy. “This in­crease will have a se­vere im­pact on ma­rine food webs.”

 

Woot­ton and col­leagues said the pro­cess seems to be oc­cur­ing in step with in­creas­ing lev­els of car­bon di­ox­ide in the at­mos­phere. Car­bon di­ox­ide is a key “green­house gas,” a com­pound that re­search­ers say acts as a large-scale blan­ket in the at­mos­phere, trap­ping heat on Earth and thus driv­ing glob­al warm­ing.

 

When the car­bon di­ox­ide dis­solves in wa­ter it forms car­bonic ac­id. Ab­nor­mally ac­idic wa­ter harms cer­tain sea an­i­mals, the au­thors said. “Many sea crea­tures have shells or skele­tons made of cal­ci­um car­bonate, which the ac­id can dis­solve,” said the uni­ver­s­ity’s Cath­er­ine Pfis­ter, a co-au­thor of the stu­dy.

 

They added that the acidity could re­duce the ocean’s abil­ity to soak up more car­bon di­ox­ide, a pro­cess which some have hoped would miti­gate cli­mate change.

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