We often read in the media that increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will make the oceans too acidic, and dissolve or otherwise harm carbonate-shelled marine fauna. These writers or reporters seem ignorant of the fact that these marine fauna evolved when the atmospheric CO₂ concentration was more than 10 times higher than the current level.(1) Ironically, a recent New York Times article was fretting that the ocean is not absorbing enough carbon dioxide to act as a good carbon “sink.”

The metric for acidity/alkalinity is called pH. The pH is defined as the negative logarithm of the hydrogen ion concentration (or the logarithm of 1 divided by the hydrogen ion concentration). The pH scale goes from zero to 14 with pH of 7 being neutral, lower than 7 is acidic, and higher than 7 alkaline.

Two factors control the amount of carbon dioxide in the ocean: ocean temperature and amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, i.e., its partial pressure. Cooler oceans and higher atmospheric CO₂ should result in more carbon dioxide in the oceans.

Henry’s law states that the concentration of a gas in a liquid is proportional to the partial pressure of the gas in equilibrium above the liquid. It stands to reason that more CO₂ in the atmosphere would translate to more in the ocean. However, Henry’s law assumes constant temperature. If the temperature changes, then the absorption changes. If the oceans warm, CO₂ will leave the ocean and return to the atmosphere. Cold liquids can hold more dissolved gas than warm liquids. Just think of what happens to a carbonated beverage left to warm to room temperature.

It has been estimated that current ocean pH is 0.1 pH unit less alkaline than it was in recent pre-industrial time, and some climate models predict a further decrease of 0.7 pH units by 2300.(2) However, proxy reconstructions of ocean acidity, based on fossil and modern corals, show that ocean pH has oscillated between pH of 7.91 and 8.29 during the past seven thousand years.(3) That cyclic variation is nearly four times larger than the 0.1 decrease alarmists are whining about, and even if the model predicted decrease of 0.7 units occurs, the water will still be alkaline.

An independent reconstruction, again based on corals, shows that between 1708 and 1988, there was a clear interdecadal oscillation of pH, (between 7.9 and 8.2 pH units) which is synchronous with the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation of water temperature.(4) During this time, atmospheric CO₂ concentration increased by about 100 parts per million. If more CO₂ is dissolved in the ocean, the added carbonate (to build the calcium carbonate shells) will more than offset the decreasing alkalinity. (5) The effect of increased CO₂ seems benign to other small sea creatures, including corals. (6)

The specter of acidification seems irrelevant to carbonate-shelled animals. What of fish and fish larvae? A study by Munday et al. (7) found CO₂ acidification had no detectable effect on embryonic duration, egg survival and size at hatching. As for adult fish, they found that most shallow-water fish tested to date appear to compensate fully their acid-base balance within several days of exposure to elevated CO2 concentrations.

Recent claims by climate change alarmists have raised the possibility that terrestrial ecosystems and particularly the oceans have started losing part of their ability to absorb a large proportion of man-made CO₂ emissions. However, a new study combines data from ice cores, direct atmospheric measurements, and emission inventories to show that the fraction of human emitted CO₂ that remains in the atmosphere has stayed constant over the past 160 years, at least within the limits of measurement uncertainty. (8)

Can the oceans ever become very acidic? There is no evidence that the oceans were ever acidic during the past 500 million years, even when atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide was more than 10 times current levels. This implies that besides temperature and partial-pressure, there is a third controlling factor. That factor is the buffering effect of carbonic acid reaction with the basaltic oceanic crustal rocks. This process uses up excess carbon dioxide.

Ocean acidification is just another scary scenario, a phantom menace.

Sources:

1. Berner, R.A. and Kothavala, Z., 2001, A revised model of atmospheric CO₂ over Phanerozoic time: Am. J. Sci., v. 301, p. 182-204.

2. Caldeira, K. and Wickett, M.E. 2003. Anthropogenic carbon and ocean pH. Nature 425: 365.

3. Liu, Y., Liu, W., Peng, Z., Xiao, Y., Wei, G., Sun, W., He, J. Liu, G. and Chou, C.-L. 2009. Instability of seawater pH in the South China Sea during the mid-late Holocene: Evidence from boron isotopic composition of corals. Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 73: 1264-1272.

4. Pelejero, C., Calvo, E., McCulloch, M.T., Marshall, J.F., Gagan, M.K., Lough, J.M. and Opdyke, B.N. 2005. Preindustrial to modern interdecadal variability in coral reef pH. Science 309: 2204-2207.

5. Gutowska, M.A., Pörtner, H.O. and Melzner, F. 2008. Growth and calcification in the cephalopod Sepia officinalis under elevated seawater pCO2. Marine Ecology Progress Series 373: 303-309

6. Kurihara, H., Ishimatsu, A. and Shirayama, Y. 2007. Effects of elevated seawater CO2 concentration of the meiofauna. Journal of Marine Science and Technology 15: 17-22

7. Munday, P.L., Donelson, J.M., Dixson, D.L. and Endo, G.G.K. 2009. Effects of ocean acidification on the early life history of a tropical marine fish. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 276: 3275-3283.

8. Knorr, W. (2009), Is the airborne fraction of anthropogenic CO2 emissions increasing?, Geophys. Res. Lett., 36, L21710, doi:10.1029/2009GL040613.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 14th, 2009 at 10:38 am and is filed under Climate change. Tags for this post: carbon dioxide, coral, global warming, Henry's law, ocean acidification, technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.