Training workshop on the fundamentals of carbon biogeochemistry

A fundamental component of the effort to understand ocean acidification and the associated climate and ecological effects and feedbacks is a solid understanding of the functioning of the marine carbon cycle. It is also imperative to develop a common methodological approach and rigorous (meta)data reporting skills. To this end a training workshop has been developed, sponsored by the EU projects EPOCA and CARBOOCEAN and the IOC.

Acid ocean warning

Scientists have warned that ocean acidification could lead to widespread extinctions of marine animals.

Ocean acidification was high on the agenda of the Climate Change Congress in Copenhagen in March, where scientists predicted that the rate of future ocean acidification would be unprecedented in the last 65 million years.

The acidity of the sea is rising due to increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels. A quarter of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere is absorbed by the sea and forms acid. Since the Industrial Revolution, the acidity of the surface of the sea has risen by 30 per cent.

Higher acidity affects the ability of marine organisms such as shellfish, lobsters and corals to build their skeletons and shells. This could affect the fishing industry and lead to the erosion and loss of coral reefs, which support marine animals, protect shorelines from erosion and flooding, and fuel tourist industries.

Dr Andy Ridgwell, a Royal Society University research fellow at the University of Bristol, said: ‘We’ve known about climate change for many decades, but it’s only in the last ten years or so that we’ve cottoned on to ocean acidification, which we call ‘the other CO2 problem’, the first problem being climate change.’

House bill shifts focus to climate change adaptation

Adaptation is at the center of a sweeping new climate and energy bill that marks a shift in focus from merely cutting greenhouse gas emissions to dealing with unavoidable consequences of global warming.

The draft climate and energy bill (pdf) unveiled yesterday by House Democrats would establish a cap-and-trade program to cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, set a national renewable electricity standard and create new energy efficiency programs.

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Beth Lowell, federal policy director for Oceana, said she was encouraged that the bill discusses the need to help marine and coastal environments adapt to climate change and ocean acidification caused by carbon dioxide emissions.

From laboratory manipulations to earth system models: predicting pelagic calcification and its consequences

The variation in pH-dependent calcification responses of coccolithophores paint a highly incoherent picture, particularly for the most commonly cultured “species”, Emiliania huxleyi. The disparity between magnitude and even sign of the calcification change at higher CO2 (lower pH), raises challenges to quantifying future carbon cycle changes and feedbacks, by introducing significant uncertainty in parameterizations used for global models. Putting aside the possibility of methodological differences that introduce an experimental bias, we highlight two pertinent observations that can help resolve conflicting interpretations: (1) a calcification “optimum” in environmental conditions (pH) has been observed in other coccolithophore species, and (2) there exists an unambiguous direction to the CO2-calcification response across mesocosm and shipboard incubations. We propose that an equivalence can be drawn between integrated ecosystem calcification as a function of pH (or other carbonate system parameter such as calcite saturation state) and a widely used description of plankton growth rate vs. temperature – the “Eppley curve”. This provides a conceptual framework for reconciling available experimental manipulations as well as a quasi-empirical relationship for ocean acidification impacts on carbonate production that can be incorporated into models. By analogy to the Eppley curve temperature vs. growth rate relationship, progressive ocean acidification in the future may drive a relatively smooth ecosystem response through transition in dominance from more to less heavily calcified coccolithophores in addition to species-specific calcification changes. However, regardless of the model parameterization employed, on a century time-scale, the CO2-calcification effect is a minor control of atmospheric CO2 compared to other C cycle feedbacks or to fossil fuel emissions.