Ocean acidification from human emissions of carbon dioxide is a very serious problem, as I have noted. Now Australia’s ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies has issued a new warning:
The world’s oceans are becoming more acid, with potentially devastating consequences for corals and the marine organisms that build reefs and provide much of the Earth’s breathable oxygen.
The acidity is caused by the gradual buildup of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere, dissolving into the oceans. Scientists fear it could be lethal for animals with chalky skeletons which make up more than a third of the planet’s marine life….
Corals and plankton with chalky skeletons are at the base of the marine food web. They rely on sea water saturated with calcium carbonate to form their skeletons. However, as acidity intensifies, the saturation declines, making it harder for the animals to form their skeletal structures (calcify).
“Analysis of coral cores shows a steady drop in calcification over the last 20 years,” says Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg of CoECRS and the University of Queensland. “There’s not much debate about how it happens: put more CO2 into the air above and it dissolves into the oceans.
“When CO2 levels in the atmosphere reach about 500 parts per million, you put calcification out of business in the oceans.” (Atmospheric CO2 levels are presently 385 ppm, up from 305 in 1960.)
On our current emissions path, we will hit 500 shortly after mid-century, sooner if we don’t act in time to prevent the carbon cycle amplifying feedbacks from kicking in. In fact, ocean acidification is itself a potentially deadly feedback:
“It isn’t just the coral reefs which are affected — a large part of the plankton in the Southern Ocean, the coccolithophorids, are also affected. These drive ocean productivity and are the base of the food web which supports krill, whales, tuna and our fisheries. They also play a vital role in removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, which could break down.”
[In short, too much acidification, and the ocean may turn from a major carbon sink to a carbon source!]
Professor Hoegh-Guldberg said an experiment at Heron Island, in which CO2 levels were increased in the air of tanks containing corals, had showed it caused some corals to cease forming skeletons. More alarmingly, red calcareous algae — the ‘glue’ that holds the edges of coral reefs together in turbulent water — actually began to dissolve. “The risk is that this may begin to erode the Barrier of the Great Barrier Reef at a grand scale,” he says.
“As an issue it’s a bit of a sleeper. Global warming is incredibly serious, but ocean acidification could be even more so.”