New Study Estimates Current Rate Of Ocean Acidification 10X That Of Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum

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Today, Ridgwell and Daniela Schmidt, also of the University of Bristol, are publishing a study in the journal Natural Geoscience, comparing what happened in the oceans 55 million years ago to what the oceans are experiencing today. Their research supports what other researchers have long suspected: The acidification of the ocean today is bigger and faster than anything geologists can find in the fossil record over the past 65 million years. Indeed, its speed and strength — Ridgwell estimate that current ocean acidification is taking place at ten times the rate that preceded the mass extinction 55 million years ago — may spell doom for many marine species, particularly ones that live in the deep ocean. “This is an almost unprecedented geological event,” says Ridgwell.

When we humans burn fossil fuels, we pump carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, where the gas traps heat. But much of that carbon dioxide does not stay in the air. Instead, it gets sucked into the oceans. If not for the oceans, climate scientists believe that the planet would be much warmer than it is today. Even with the oceans’ massive uptake of CO2, the past decade was still the warmest since modern record-keeping began. But storing carbon dioxide in the oceans may come at a steep cost: It changes the chemistry of seawater.

At the ocean’s surface, seawater typically has a pH of about 8 to 8.3 pH units. For comparison, the pH of pure water is 7, and stomach acid is around 2. The pH level of a liquid is determined by how many positively charged hydrogen atoms are floating around in it. The more hydrogen ions, the lower the pH. When carbon dioxide enters the ocean, it lowers the pH by reacting with water. The carbon dioxide we have put into the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution has lowered the ocean pH level by .1. That may seem tiny, but it’s not. The pH scale is logarithmic, meaning that there are 10 times more hydrogen ions in a pH 5 liquid than one at pH 6, and 100 times more than pH 7. As a result, a drop of just .1 pH units means that the concentration of hydrogen ions in the ocean has gone up by about 30 percent in the past two centuries.

To see how ocean acidification is going to affect life in the ocean, scientists have run laboratory experiments in which they rear organisms at different pH levels. The results have been worrying — particularly for species that build skeletons out of calcium carbonate, such as corals and amoeba-like organisms called foraminifera. The extra hydrogen in low-pH seawater reacts with calcium carbonate, turning it into other compounds that animals can’t use to build their shells.

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http://www.e360.yale.edu/content/feature.msp?id=2241

A 65M year record is hard to argue with. Lets hope this gets some press.

They might start caring on the day that marine biologists finally report that coral reefs can no longer build their shells.

I'm not even sure anybody will get it then.

This may be the most critical issue facing the future of the planet.

When it finally happens, nobody will be able to say they didn't try to warn us. Frequently. Nevertheless, I have no doubt that many breathless articles will be published using phrases like "nobody could have predicted..."

addressing situation,,,we worry about missing people and murder for months on end

We love the moot and minutae...the things that distract us...

Our Planet is under seige from Human activity and we worry about lesser things while the damage continues and is nescalating.

WE are so divided we canardly shit while we solve...

Auwe Pilikea O Ka'aina

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=129285&mesg_id=129362

The Deccan traps happened about 10 million years before the PETM, but they were coincidental with the K-T extinction event. The rate similarity is enough to make you go Hmmm.