To study whole ecosystems—including the many other environmental effects beyond acidification, including warming, pollution, and overfishing—scientists need to do it in the field.
Scientists from five European countries built ten mesocosms—essentially giant test tubes feet deep that hold almost 15, gallons of water—and placed them in the Swedish Gullmar Fjord. After letting plankton and other tiny organisms drift or swim in, the researchers sealed the test tubes and decreased the pH to 7. Now they are waiting to see how the organisms will react , and whether they're able to adapt.
If this experiment, one of the first of its kind, is successful, it can be repeated in different ocean areas around the world. If the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere stabilizes, eventually buffering or neutralizing will occur and pH will return to normal. This is why there are periods in the past with much higher levels of carbon dioxide but no evidence of ocean acidification: the rate of carbon dioxide increase was slower, so the ocean had time to buffer and adapt.
But this time, pH is dropping too quickly. Buffering will take thousands of years, which is way too long a period of time for the ocean organisms affected now and in the near future. So far, the signs of acidification visible to humans are few. But they will only increase as more carbon dioxide dissolves into seawater over time.
What can we do to stop it? In , carbon dioxide in the atmosphere passed parts per million ppm —higher than at any time in the last one million years and maybe even 25 million years. The "safe" level of carbon dioxide is around ppm, a milestone we passed in Without ocean absorption, atmospheric carbon dioxide would be even higher—closer to ppm.
The most realistic way to lower this number—or to keep it from getting astronomically higher—would be to reduce our carbon emissions by burning less fossil fuels and finding more carbon sinks, such as regrowing mangroves , seagrass beds , and marshes, known as blue carbon.
If we did, over hundreds of thousands of years, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and ocean would stabilize again. Even if we stopped emitting all carbon right now, ocean acidification would not end immediately. This is because there is a lag between changing our emissions and when we start to feel the effects. It's kind of like making a short stop while driving a car: even if you slam the brakes, the car will still move for tens or hundreds of feet before coming to a halt.
The same thing happens with emissions, but instead of stopping a moving vehicle, the climate will continue to change, the atmosphere will continue to warm and the ocean will continue to acidify. Carbon dioxide typically lasts in the atmosphere for hundreds of years; in the ocean, this effect is amplified further as more acidic ocean waters mix with deep water over a cycle that also lasts hundreds of years.
It's possible that we will develop technologies that can help us reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide or the acidity of the ocean more quickly or without needing to cut carbon emissions very drastically. Because such solutions would require us to deliberately manipulate planetary systems and the biosphere whether through the atmosphere, ocean, or other natural systems , such solutions are grouped under the title "geoengineering. The main effect of increasing carbon dioxide that weighs on people's minds is the warming of the planet.
Some geoengineering proposals address this through various ways of reflecting sunlight—and thus excess heat—back into space from the atmosphere. This could be done by releasing particles into the high atmosphere , which act like tiny, reflecting mirrors, or even by putting giant reflecting mirrors in orbit! However, this solution does nothing to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and this carbon dioxide would continue to dissolve into the ocean and cause acidification.
Another idea is to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by growing more of the organisms that use it up: phytoplankton. Adding iron or other fertilizers to the ocean could cause man-made phytoplankton blooms. This phytoplankton would then absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and then, after death, sink down and trap it in the deep sea.
However, it's unknown how this would affect marine food webs that depend on phytoplankton, or whether this would just cause the deep sea to become more acidic itself. Even though the ocean may seem far away from your front door, there are things you can do in your life and in your home that can help to slow ocean acidification and carbon dioxide emissions. The best thing you can do is to try and lower how much carbon dioxide you use every day.
Try to reduce your energy use at home by recycling, turning off unused lights, walking or biking short distances instead of driving, using public transportation, and supporting clean energy, such as solar, wind, and geothermal power.
Even the simple act of checking your tire pressure or asking your parents to check theirs can lower gas consumption and reduce your carbon footprint. Calculate your carbon footprint here. One of the most important things you can do is to tell your friends and family about ocean acidification. Because scientists only noticed what a big problem it is fairly recently, a lot of people still don't know it is happening.
So talk about it! Educate your classmates, coworkers and friends about how acidification will affect the amazing ocean animals that provide food, income, and beauty to billions of people around the world. What is Ocean Acidification? Skip to main content. This graph shows rising levels of carbon dioxide CO2 in the atmosphere, rising CO2 levels in the ocean, and decreasing pH in the water off the coast of Hawaii. The acidic waters from the CO 2 seeps can dissolve shells and also make it harder for shells to grow in the first place.
Laetitia Plaisance. Branching corals, because of their more fragile structure, struggle to live in acidified waters around natural carbon dioxide seeps, a model for a more acidic future ocean.
Ochre seastars Pisaster ochraceus feed on mussels off the coast of Oregon. This pair of sea butterflies Limacina helicina flutter not far from the ocean's surface in the Arctic. Courtesy of Alexander Semenov, Flickr. Now, as the oceans are undergoing a historic shift in chemistry, the lab is establishing itself as a place to study what that will mean for marine life. And the University of Washington laboratory is uniquely placed in naturally acidic waters that may be some of the first pushed over the edge by human-generated carbon emissions.
Measurements were collected from the dock at Friday Harbor Labs, which also is used for experiments that simulate future ocean acidification levels. Water was also collected from the pumphouse, the small brown building in the background on the left. A paper published last month in Limnology and Oceanography tracks about two years of weekly pH data in Puget Sound, collected since the UW established a facility there to study the effects of ocean acidification.
Measurements off the dock show that the water surrounding the lab has an average pH of about 7. Official websites use. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites. JavaScript appears to be disabled on this computer.
Please click here to see any active alerts. Until recently, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has fluctuated slightly and slowly during the past 10, years. However, the Industrial Revolution of the s started a global adoption of fossil fuels to power human activity. The rate at which fossil fuels like coal, oil, and natural gas are burned has increased up until the present day.
Burning fossil fuels releases carbon dioxide gas to the atmosphere, and the ever-increasing global use of fossil fuels has caused the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to increase to a concentration that is higher than any time in the past , years. The cutting of forests for fuel or to clear land for agriculture over the past years has also contributed to higher carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere because trees capture and store carbon dioxide via photosynthesis. It is occurring faster now than in the last 20 million years.
Find out how ocean acidification is causing problems for marine life. Smart cookie preferences. Change cookie preferences Accept all cookies.
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