Ocean Acidification: Without Blue There Is No Green

ISBN-10: 1976886791
ISBN-13: 9781976886799
Series: Ocean Acidification
Pages: 24
Language: English
Published: 2018-01-13
Author: Sivakumaran Sivaramanan

Description

Ocean acidification is the equally evil twin of climate change and it happens alongside of the global warming. Ocean acidification has lowered the pH of the ocean waters by about 0.11 units (SCOR 2009 as cited in 'Tech Ocean Science', n.d.). This is mainly due to anthropogenic CO2 emission, amount of CO2 on upper layer of the ocean has been increasing by 2 billion tons per year. Oceans have absorbed 1/3 of the CO2 produced by human activities since 1800 and fossil fuel burning alone account for half of the CO2 in the atmosphere (Sabine et al., 2004 as cited in 'Tech Ocean Science', n.d.).If CO2 emission levels continue to remain unchanged, the future CO2 levels will be high enough to lower the pH of ocean to 7.8 by the year 2100 (Royal Society, 2005 as cited in 'Tech Ocean Science', n.d.). Ocean acidification affects the calcifying or calcareous organisms such as planktons: pteropod, cocolithophores and foraminifera, echinoderms, mollusks, crustaceans, coral reefs, etc. Lower pH also may cause increase in seagrass and cyanobacteria. However, reduction in population of lower trophic level organisms such as planktons causes subsequent reduction in the population of krill, salmon and whales. Lower pH also affect oyster production and coastal aquaculture. Corals will get die off, this affects millions of aquatic biodiversity that depends on coral reef habitats. This ultimately cause collapse in the marine food web, and these catastrophic events lead to fall in the entire global fish market, Loss of corals also affect the tourism industry. Change in the ocean chemistry affects the biogeochemical cycles and biological energy flow. It has been estimated by the end of this century the surface waters of the ocean could be about 150 % more acidic and resulting in a pH that ocean waters have never experienced for more than 20 million years ("pmel.noaa.gov," n.d.). In addition, this acidification is faster than any acidification process that occurs in marine environment in the past million years, even a catastrophic natural acidification event that have happened in the Paleocene and Eocene boundary (55 million years ago) coincided with mass extinction of species was 10 times slower than today's acidification process. Are we heading towards a major catastrophic event in the ocean?This book summarizes the ocean acidification problem, impacts and possible mitigations or possible actions to be taken in the future.