Maybe it's like the Swiss Navy, the...
Category: ocean acidification
Maybe it's like the Swiss Navy, the punchline for a joke. After all, what does Nicolas Gruber, a guy from Zurich, know about surfing in wet suits? Or the foggy breezes that, for one example. darned near obliterated some of the views of yesterday's closing round of the US Open on a San Francisco golf course? How'd he even ever hear of the California Current that meanders down the West Coast, triggering upwelling of nutrient rich, cold water and feeding vast schools of fish, plankton, sea birds, and the nets of fishing boats? How, a reporter might ask, is he equipped to opine on such things?
But even at the landlocked at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology he knows about such things because he's...
Several years ago reports circulated on massive die offs of...
Several years ago reports circulated on massive die offs of farmed oysters in Oregon and Washington with the prime suspect a change in pH - level of acidity - due to an unusual upwelling of cold deep water into coastal shallows. Now a set of experiments studying in detail a hatchery's success as waters from various sources circulated through it delivers a verdict: guilty as charged.
While the specific reasons that deep water off the Pacific Northwest might be less alkaline than is typical and are prone to occasionally surge near shore may be a regional peculiarity, the slowly changing acidity of the oceans in general is what makes the study news. The levels that did mischief to oysters there are not unlike what some project...
In Science magazine today is a long...
In Science magazine today is a long research report and review of the other shoe in global change. While greenhouse gases in the air trap heat, the action in the ocean of the prime one, CO2, makes it an acidification agent. It dissolves, and carbonic acid is one side effect. That in turn could dissolve corals and the shell parts of shellfish. Not all of them, of course. But worldwide, pH levels - a measure of hydrogen ion levels and thus of position along the scale from acid (low pH) to alkaline (high pH) - are dropping. Not much yet, but maybe enough to herald havoc.
Not that the globe is necessarily heading for an ocean regime that life has never faced before. Maybe it has. But, the report concludes...
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A look this morning at the Associated Press feed revealed two breaking stories on oceans and their environmental status - and led to much more.
Seth Borenstein is writing on a new report for the UN that adds glum, urgent detail to an already...
Ocean acidification may not be the...
Ocean acidification may not be the best term for what's happening to pH in seawater, but under-alkalinization is even worse so there you go. It is trending toward acid, and for years has been the forgotten step child of rising CO2 what with solar forcing and temperature rise worries getting most media and policy fretting.
A few outlets recently have reported that its profile may be rising some. I got to the topic by happenstance, in doing the next post down on a marine biology trek to the Bering Sea with a freelancer on board for Nature, which in turn led me to a blog post on acidification:
- Nature / The Great Beyond - Amanda Mascarelli:...
Yesterday the regular e-...
Yesterday the regular e-mailing of a National Academies Press alert included reminder that among titles on its recent, hefty tomes is "Ocean Acidification: A National Strategy to Meet the Challenges of a Changing Ocean" (links and the press release in Grist below). The 175-page report, with 12 authorities on its authoring committee, appears to have been out for awhile. The press release is dated in April. But coming across the notice leads to a question. What kind of coverage of this worrisome, nagging, and darned near insoluble issue has landed recently?
You can probably guess the answer, so one naturally wonders whether a problem is its label, the ear-numbing "ocean acidification" ?
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