Ocean Upwellings In 2007 Showed Acidity Projected For 2050 AD - pH Of 7.7 - - Normal 8.0 - 8.3

Seawater with the potentially shell-disrupting chemistry predicted for the open ocean after 2050 has already surfaced along North America’s West Coast, scientists report.

In spring 2007, the corrosive, deep water rose temporarily to the Pacific surface some 40 kilometers roughly west of the California-Oregon border, says Richard Feely of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle. Elsewhere on the continental shelf, corrosive water rolled up but didn’t surge all the way to the surface, Feely and his colleagues report in an upcoming Science.

Deeper water normally swells upward at this time of year. But so much carbon dioxide — from natural and human-related processes — had dissolved in the water that the upwelling had a pH around 7.7. Surface water in the region typically has a pH of between 8.0 and 8.3 (a pH below 7 is acidic).

Gloomy estimates hadn’t predicted such a pH drop at the ocean surface until the second half of the century, Feely says. “This means that ocean acidification may be seriously impacting marine life on our continental shelf right now,” he says.

EDIT

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/32458/title/Ocean_reflux

This is getting scary.