APP - Rising Ocean Acidity: 'The Other Carbon Problem'

tom prendergast said:
Yet a report in the Guardian says exactly the opposite!!

Sea absorbing less CO2, scientists discover


Scientists have issued a new warning about climate change after discovering a sudden and dramatic collapse in the amount of carbon emissions absorbed by the Sea of Japan.


The shift has alarmed experts, who blame global warming.
The world's oceans soak up about 11bn tonnes of human carbon dioxide pollution each year, about a quarter of all produced, and even a slight weakening of this natural process would leave significantly more CO2 in the atmosphere. That would require countries to adopt much stricter emissions targets to prevent dangerous rises in temperature.


Kitack Lee, an associate professor at Pohang University of Science and Technology, who led the research, says the discovery is the "very first observation that directly relates ocean CO2 uptake change to ocean warming".


He says the warmer conditions disrupt a process known as "ventilation" - the way seawater flows and mixes and drags absorbed CO2 from surface waters to the depths. He warns that the effect is probably not confined to the Sea of Japan. It could also affect CO2 uptake in the Atlantic and Southern oceans.


"Our result in the East Sea unequivocally demonstrated that oceanic uptake of CO2 has been directly affected by warming-induced weakening of vertical ventilation," he says. Korea argues that the Sea of Japan should be renamed the East Sea, because it says the former is a legacy of Japan's military expansion in the region.


Lee adds: "In other words, the increase in atmospheric temperature due to global warming can profoundly influence the ocean ventilation, thereby decreasing the uptake rate of CO2."


Working with Pavel Tishchenko of the Russian Pacific Oceanological Institute in Vladivostok, Lee and his colleague Geun-Ha Park used a cruise on the Professor Gagarinskiy, a Russian research vessel, last May to take seawater samples from 24 sites across the Sea of Japan.



They compared the dissolved CO2 in the seawater with similar samples collected in 1992 and 1999. The results showed the amount of CO2 absorbed during 1999 to 2007 was half the level recorded from 1992 to 1999.


Crucially, the study revealed that ocean mixing, a process required to deposit carbon in deep water, where it is more likely to stay, appears to have significantly weakened.



Announcing their results in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, the scientists say: "The striking feature is that nearly all anthropogenic CO2 taken up in the recent period was confined to waters less than 300 metres in depth. The rapid and substantial reduction ... is surprising and is attributed to considerable weakening of overturning circulation."



Corinne Le Quéré, an expert in ocean carbon storage at the University of East Anglia, said: "We don't think the ocean is just going to completely stop taking our carbon dioxide emissions, but if the effect weakens then it has real consequences for the atmosphere."
Click to expand...

It is slightly dismaying that one lot of scientists are saying that the World's oceans are getting more acidic whilst another lot are saying that they are taking up a lot less. They can't both be right, can they?
 
tom prendergast said:
Yet a report in the Guardian says exactly the opposite!!

Sea absorbing less CO2, scientists discover


Scientists have issued a new warning about climate change after discovering a sudden and dramatic collapse in the amount of carbon emissions absorbed by the Sea of Japan.


The shift has alarmed experts, who blame global warming.
The world's oceans soak up about 11bn tonnes of human carbon dioxide pollution each year, about a quarter of all produced, and even a slight weakening of this natural process would leave significantly more CO2 in the atmosphere. That would require countries to adopt much stricter emissions targets to prevent dangerous rises in temperature.


Kitack Lee, an associate professor at Pohang University of Science and Technology, who led the research, says the discovery is the "very first observation that directly relates ocean CO2 uptake change to ocean warming".


He says the warmer conditions disrupt a process known as "ventilation" - the way seawater flows and mixes and drags absorbed CO2 from surface waters to the depths. He warns that the effect is probably not confined to the Sea of Japan. It could also affect CO2 uptake in the Atlantic and Southern oceans.


"Our result in the East Sea unequivocally demonstrated that oceanic uptake of CO2 has been directly affected by warming-induced weakening of vertical ventilation," he says. Korea argues that the Sea of Japan should be renamed the East Sea, because it says the former is a legacy of Japan's military expansion in the region.


Lee adds: "In other words, the increase in atmospheric temperature due to global warming can profoundly influence the ocean ventilation, thereby decreasing the uptake rate of CO2."


Working with Pavel Tishchenko of the Russian Pacific Oceanological Institute in Vladivostok, Lee and his colleague Geun-Ha Park used a cruise on the Professor Gagarinskiy, a Russian research vessel, last May to take seawater samples from 24 sites across the Sea of Japan.



They compared the dissolved CO2 in the seawater with similar samples collected in 1992 and 1999. The results showed the amount of CO2 absorbed during 1999 to 2007 was half the level recorded from 1992 to 1999.


Crucially, the study revealed that ocean mixing, a process required to deposit carbon in deep water, where it is more likely to stay, appears to have significantly weakened.



Announcing their results in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, the scientists say: "The striking feature is that nearly all anthropogenic CO2 taken up in the recent period was confined to waters less than 300 metres in depth. The rapid and substantial reduction ... is surprising and is attributed to considerable weakening of overturning circulation."



Corinne Le Quéré, an expert in ocean carbon storage at the University of East Anglia, said: "We don't think the ocean is just going to completely stop taking our carbon dioxide emissions, but if the effect weakens then it has real consequences for the atmosphere."
Click to expand...

the CO2 exists, the problem is that we do not know precisely what it will do

it is not so much that the fresh and salt water masses absorb the CO2, but that the rain that feeds those masses does

where the CO2 goes and what it does presents an unknown problem

if those that say it does not present a problem are wrong, then we are screwed

also, it is not just the shell fish that are a problem, we can live live without shell fish (not so sure about other species) but can the micro organisms that live near the oceans surface survive the change in Ph change
 
tom prendergast said:
Is that another way of saying simplify it for you?
Click to expand...

Maybe this will help?

The concept of CLOUD is to construct a large aerosol chamber in which conditions anywhere in the atmosphere can be recreated and then to expose the chamber to a particle beam at CERN, which closely replicates natural cosmic rays. The chamber is equipped with a wide range of instrumentation to monitor and analyse its contents. In contrast with experiments in the atmosphere, CLOUD can compare processes when the cosmic ray beam is present and when it is not. In this way cosmic ray-aerosol-cloud microphysics can be studied under carefully controlled laboratory conditions.

http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/1172365/files/SPSC-SR-046.pdf
 
tom prendergast said:
It is slightly dismaying that one lot of scientists are saying that the World's oceans are getting more acidic whilst another lot are saying that they are taking up a lot less. They can't both be right, can they?
Click to expand...
Now you see whey SM and I are skeptical. Though I'm not pulling in politics. I just haven't seen enough data to be convinced.
 
DonQuixote said:
the CO2 exists, the problem is that we do not know precisely what it will do

it is not so much that the fresh and salt water masses absorb the CO2, but that the rain that feeds those masses does

where the CO2 goes and what it does presents an unknown problem

if those that say it does not present a problem are wrong, then we are screwed

also, it is not just the shell fish that are a problem, we can live live without shell fish (not so sure about other species) but can the micro organisms that live near the oceans surface survive the change in Ph change
Click to expand...
I think that's an over stated issue. First, ocean water is buffered. The quantity of CO2 required to cause any threshold change in pH would be tremendous and even if that occured the change in pH would be marginal, only a few tenths of a pH point. Certainly that can have an impact on the biological food chain but not such a great impact that one would not expect to see biological adaptation to the changing conditions. Hell that's been going on since the begining of life on this planet.
 
Mott the Hoople said:
I think that's an over stated issue. First, ocean water is buffered. The quantity of CO2 required to cause any threshold change in pH would be tremendous and even if that occured the change in pH would be marginal, only a few tenths of a pH point. Certainly that can have an impact on the biological food chain but not such a great impact that one would not expect to see biological adaptation to the changing conditions. Hell that's been going on since the begining of life on this planet.
Click to expand...

the quantities involved are huge

as for the food chain, a few tenth of a ph can kill micro organisms

as for adaptation, yes it has been going on for eons,but sometimes it takes more time to adapt than is given and an ecology can collapse until a new ecology / equilibrium is established

like i said before, what if we are wrong...we are at the top of said food chain and for what ever reason global change is happening and has happened before...nature does not care about the animals in the food chain, they can always be replaced...ask the dinosaurs, some did survive, just not many
 
Mott the Hoople said:
What does this have to do with increasing ocean acidity and it's biological impact?
Click to expand...


LOL
Why not learn how cosmic ray flux correlates to cloud cover, and thus albedo changes? As the oceans warm, they absorb less CO2. It's all reliant on the sun spot activity, which disrupts cosmic rays and controls climate through cloud seeding and albedo changes.

You're only a few google searches away from all the info you need.

But of course, I have given you this, so you will ignore it
 
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