Mother Jones: Unprecedented Ocean Acidification Underway

[tex-wyo-dem]

Last edited Wed Mar 7, 2012, 10:59 PM - Edit history (1)

Unprecedented Ocean Acidification Underway

By Julia Whitty, Fri Mar. 2, 2012 12:20 PM PST

A new and alarming paper in the prestigious journal Science reports today that the world's oceans may be acidifying faster now than at any time during the four major extinctions of the last 300 million years, when natural pulses of carbon sent global temperatures soaring as much as 6 degrees C (10.8 degrees F).

The study is the first of its kind to survey the geologic record for evidence of ocean acidification over such a huge time frame.

In the past century, due to fossil fuel emissions, atmospheric CO2 has risen about 30 percent. The oceans have sequestered about a third of that, making them ~30 percent more acidic, as pH has fallen from 8.2 to 8.1.

That amounts to a gargantuan change in chemistry, which has reduced carbonate ion concentrations in seawater by ~16 percent.

<more: http://motherjones.com/blue-marble/2012/03/ocean-acidification-unprecedented >

[Mojorabbit]

1. I'm old but I really worry about the next generation. We have left them a disaster. nt