There goes another scare campaign.
Until recently we had very little data about real time changes in ocean pH around the world. Finally autonomous sensors placed in a variety of ecosystems “from tropical to polar, open-ocean to coastal, kelp forest to coral reef” give us the information we needed.
It turns out that far from being a stable pH, spots all over the world are constantly changing. One spot in the ocean varied by an astonishing 1.4 pH units regularly. All our human emissions are projected by models to change the world’s oceans by about 0.3 pH units over the next 90 years, and that’s referred to as “catastrophic”, yet we now know that fish and some calcifying critters adapt naturally to changes far larger than that every year, sometimes in just a month, and in extreme cases, in just a day.
Data was collected by 15 individual SeaFET sensors in seven types of marine habitats. Four sites were fairly stable (1, which includes the open ocean, and also sites 2,3,4) but most of the rest were highly variable (esp site 15 near Italy and 14 near Mexico) . On a monthly scale the pH varies by 0.024 to 1.430 pH units.
Figure 1. Map of pH sensor (SeaFET) deployment locations.
See Table 1 for details of locations
The authors draw two conclusions: (1) most non-open ocean sites vary a lot, and (2) and some spots vary so much they reach the “extreme” pH’s forecast for the doomsday future scenarios on a daily (a daily!) basis.
At Puerto Morelos (in Mexico’s easternmost state, on the Yucatán Peninsula) the pH varied as much as 0.3 units per hour due to groundwater springs. Each day the pH bottomed at about 10am, and peaked shortly after sunset. These extreme sites tell us that some marine life can cope with larger, faster swings than the apocalyptic predictions suggest, though of course, no one is suggesting that the entire global ocean would be happy with similar extreme swings.
Even the more stable and vast open ocean is not a fixed pH all year round. Hofmann writes that “Open-water areas (in the Southern Ocean) experience a strong seasonal shift in seawater pH (~0.3–0.5 units) between austral summer and winter.”
This paper is such a game changer, they talk about rewriting the null hypothesis:
OOPS!
As a side note, whenever you are out in So Cal try to buy out an hour or two to visit Scripps’ Birch Aquarium in La Jolla.
My wallpaper for my homepage came from one of their tanks.
http://aquarium.ucsd.edu/Exhibits/
The mass extinction of a majority of higher species on the planet is also a recurring phenomenon, so there’s probably no reason to worry about the one that’s currently underway. (Refer to the Holocene Mass Extinction Event.)
“This paper is such a game changer, they talk about rewriting the null hypothesis”: Actually they are most likely plotting to eliminate this researchers grant money and eliminate his position. If it wasn’t for human being interference the dinosaurs would still be around.
@ Greg:
As an avid scuba diver, I doubt there are many that can come close to my love of the ocean. It is on the ocean that I am happiest. I despise shark finning and want to see something done about it. I believe it is going to have a big impact on ocean environments. The Lion Fish invasion of the Caribbean is another problem and man made. Climate change is a load of crap. Ocean acidification is natural, and believe it or oil actually seeps up from the ocean floor if it is not mined for. Natural gas eruptions, methane eruptions, and all manner of mishaps happen naturally and the ocean is able to heal itself. We do enough stupid things to the environment and don’t need left wing nonsense added to it.
Things like shark finning, over fishing, and non-native species invasions are something we can control. Why don’t you focus on those and knock it off with the Al Gore idiocracy.
As for the bees…left wing fear mongering takes another lesson from science.
from your link:
The real story:
http://news.yahoo.com/zombie-fly-parasite-killing-honeybees-230200867.html
@Aqua:
Great points, Aqua.
The Census of Marine Life was founded in 2000.
Since then its members have discovered an estimated 6,000 previously unknown species and identified hotspots and highways of marine life.
Perhaps the coolest new species of the deep is the yeti crab.
It “farms” bacteria on its claws by waving them in methane that seeps from the sea bed and nourishes the bugs.
Hydrothermal vents can be home to a variety of marine life that thrives in darkness on bacteria fed by chemicals.
Mineral chimneys are full of sulfides and methanes, but also full of life.
Maybe we are being just a bit too Homo sapien-centric when we blithely claim all these gases and chemicals are bad for living things.