Ocean health is moving into a danger zone, with rampant human-caused carbon dioxide emissions having already pushed ocean acidification levels beyond safe limits in large swaths of the marine environment, according to a recent study. The new findings underline the urgent need to ramp up protection of the world’s oceans, while simultaneously slashing CO2 emissions, say experts. But from a scientific perspective, worsening ocean acidification is not an overly surprising finding, considering that carbon dioxide emissions remain high, says lead author Helen Findlay, a biological oceanographer at the Plymouth Marine Laboratory in the U.K. Researchers have known for decades that humanity’s CO2 emissions are being absorbed by seawater, triggering chemical reactions that release hydrogen ions, in turn reducing the abundance of carbonate ions. This ocean acidification process — which has escalated in tandem with atmospheric emissions — has implications for a large number of ocean-dwelling calcifying species that rely on calcium carbonate for their shells, with harm to those species potentially reverberating throughout marine ecosystems. “We have really good data sets, and the data sets and this paper really just emphasize that we’re just watching the system crash.… [W]e need to be making real change now so that we don’t make things worse,” Findlay says. “In my assessment, [this new paper] confirms what we’ve been expecting,” agrees Johan Rockström, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, who was not involved in the current study. “[W]e are unfortunately moving beyond the safe boundary on ocean acidification.” Researchers…This article was originally published on Mongabay
From Conservation news via this RSS feed