The escalating level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is making the world’s oceans more acidic, government and independent scientists say. By the end of the century, they warn, the trend could decimate coral reefs and creatures that underpin the sea’s food web.
Although scientists and some politicians have just begun to focus on the question of ocean acidification, they describe it as one of the most pressing environmental threats facing the Earth.
“It’s just been an absolute time bomb that’s gone off both in the scientific community and ultimately, in our public policymaking,” said U.S. Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Wash.
“It’s another example of when you put gigatons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, you have these results none of us would have predicted,” he added.
A coalition of federal and university scientists issued a report Wednesday describing how carbon dioxide emissions are, in the words of a news release from the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, “dramatically altering ocean chemistry and threatening corals and other marine organisms that secrete skeletal structures.”
For decades, scientists have viewed the ocean’s absorption of carbon dioxide as an environmental plus, because it mitigates the effects of global warming.
But by taking up one-third of the atmosphere’s carbon dioxide – much of which stems from exhaust from automobiles, power plants and other industrial sources – the ocean is transforming its pH level.
The pH level is a calculation of the balance of a liquid’s acidity and its alkalinity. The lower a liquid’s pH number, the higher its acidity; the higher the number, the more alkaline it is.
Ken Caldeira, a chemical oceanographer at Stanford University who briefed lawmakers along with NCAR marine ecologist Joan Kleypas, said the ocean is more acidic than it has been for “many millions of years.”
“CO2 levels are going up extremely rapidly, and it’s overwhelming our marine systems,” he said.
