Imagine standing on a pier by the sea grasping a bowling ball. You lose your grip and it falls into the waves below. Imagine that the bowling ball is compressed down into that familiar size and weight. Your bowling ball's worth of extra CO 2, plus the 8 billion or so from everyone else, is roughly your share of the human-caused carbon emissions that are absorbed by the sea. The oceans have taken 30 percent of the extra gas.
The molecule that causes so much CO 2 to end up in the ocean is very hydraphilic. It is much more fond of reacting with water than other gasses. The first product of that reaction is carbonic acid. It is a recipe for a caustic solution. The more hydrogen ion a solution has, the more acidic it is, which is why as the CO2 in Earth's atmosphere has increased, its water has gotten more acidic as well. The ocean is predicted to reach a level of acidity that hasn't been seen in millions of years by the end of the century. Mass die-offs of some aquatic species have been linked with prior periods of acidification and warming. The scientists think this acidification is happening much faster.
The effects of acidification are already acute in the planet's northernmost waters and that change is striking hardest and fastest. She studies pteropods, tiny sea snails that are also known as "sea butterflies" because of their translucent, shimmering shells that lookuncannily like wings. If you take the snails out of the water, you will see a dull reality. It's a sign of an early death when the oncepristine shells become pock-marked. Bednarek calls them the canary in the coal mine because they are a critical part of the food chain that supports bigger fish, crabs, and mammals.
The oceanographer at the University of Delaware says that there are several reasons for the icy waters in the northern part of the world. The ice is starting to melt. It prevents the exchange of gasses between the atmosphere and the ocean. The extra CO 2 in the air above it is sucked up by the water. The acid could be mitigated by the meltwater. It fails to mix with the deeper water below. A pool of water near the surface is acidic. According to a recent study published in the journal Science, the rate of acidification in the ocean is three to four times the rate of other ocean basins. We knew acidification would be quick. We didn't know how fast. They theorize that the rapid decrease in the range of summer ice is the reason. The end-of- summer ice has shrunk by an average of 13 percent per decade over the past three decades.
It is difficult to put a number on the acidification rates in the entire ocean. The water is shallow and mixes with meltwater and freshwater from the surrounding continents. It is locked in with ice all the time in other places. Data that is consistent from year to year, covering a wide territory and varied seasons is what researchers want. Short-term timing is important, as local conditions can change dramatically on a week-to-week basis depending on factors like the activity of phytoplankton, which may briefly bloom in an area during the summer and suddenly suck up some of the extra CO 2 Data is hard to get up there. Cai is using summertime voyages across a relatively small portion of the sea to look at acidification.
There are other ways to understand the trends. Global climate models are used by a senior scientist at France's Atomic Energy Commission to track trends in ocean salinity, temperature, and the movement of biological forces in the water. Predicting where acidification is going is something his team can do. The models suggest by the end of this century that the seasonal pattern of ocean acidity may be turned on its head. During the summer, there are blooms of algae. Summer is poised to become the period of highest acidity all year as the ice melt and shrink earlier than before. That conclusion was a big deal for Orr. It could be up to a month's shift in the pattern, he says. It may be up to six months.
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