Anthropogenic ocean acidification over the twenty-first century and its impact on calcifying organisms : Abstract : Nature
Anthropogenic ocean acidification over the twenty-first century and its impact on calcifying organisms
James C. Orr1, Victoria J. Fabry2, Olivier Aumont3, Laurent Bopp1, Scott C. Doney4, Richard A. Feely5, Anand Gnanadesikan6, Nicolas Gruber7, Akio Ishida8, Fortunat Joos9, Robert M. Key10, Keith Lindsay11, Ernst Maier-Reimer12, Richard Matear13, Patrick Monfray1,19, Anne Mouchet14, Raymond G. Najjar15, Gian-Kasper Plattner7,9, Keith B. Rodgers1,16,19, Christopher L. Sabine5, Jorge L. Sarmiento10, Reiner Schlitzer17, Richard D. Slater10, Ian J. Totterdell18,19, Marie-France Weirig17, Yasuhiro Yamanaka8 & Andrew Yool18
Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement, UMR CEA-CNRS, CEA Saclay, F-91191 Gif-sur-Yvette, France
Department of Biological Sciences, California State University San Marcos, San Marcos, California 92096-0001, USA
Laboratoire d'Océanographie et du Climat: Expérimentations et Approches Numériques (LOCEAN), Centre IRD de Bretagne, F-29280 Plouzané, France
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, Massachusetts 02543-1543, USA
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)/Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, Seattle, Washington 98115-6349, USA
NOAA/Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, Princeton, New Jersey 08542, USA
Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics, UCLA, Los Angeles, California 90095-4996, USA
Frontier Research Center for Global Change, Yokohama 236-0001, Japan
Climate and Environmental Physics, Physics Institute, University of Bern, CH-3012 Bern, Switzerland
Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences (AOS) Program, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08544-0710, USA
National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colorado 80307-3000, USA
Max Planck Institut für Meteorologie, D-20146 Hamburg, Germany
CSIRO Marine Research and Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems CRC, Hobart, Tasmania 7001, Australia
Astrophysics and Geophysics Institute, University of Liege, B-4000 Liege, Belgium
Department of Meteorology, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania 16802-5013, USA
LOCEAN, Université Pierre et Marie Curie, F-75252 Paris, France
Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, D-27515 Bremerhaven, Germany
National Oceanography Centre Southampton, Southampton SO14 3ZH, UK
†Present addresses: Laboratoire d'Etudes en Géophysique et Océanographie Spatiales, UMR 5566 CNES-CNRS-IRD-UPS, F-31401 Toulouse, France (P.M.); AOS Program, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08544-0710, USA (K.B.R.); The Met Office, Hadley Centre, FitzRoy Road, Exeter EX1 3PB, UK (I.J.T.)
Correspondence to: James C. Orr1 Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to J.C.O. (Email:
orr@cea.fr).
Top of pageAbstract
Today's surface ocean is saturated with respect to calcium carbonate, but increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations are reducing ocean pH and carbonate ion concentrations, and thus the level of calcium carbonate saturation. Experimental evidence suggests that if these trends continue, key marine organisms—such as corals and some plankton—will have difficulty maintaining their external calcium carbonate skeletons. Here we use 13 models of the ocean–carbon cycle to assess calcium carbonate saturation under the IS92a 'business-as-usual' scenario for future emissions of anthropogenic carbon dioxide. In our projections, Southern Ocean surface waters will begin to become undersaturated with respect to aragonite, a metastable form of calcium carbonate, by the year 2050. By 2100, this undersaturation could extend throughout the entire Southern Ocean and into the subarctic Pacific Ocean. When live pteropods were exposed to our predicted level of undersaturation during a two-day shipboard experiment, their aragonite shells showed notable dissolution. Our findings indicate that conditions detrimental to high-latitude ecosystems could develop within decades, not centuries as suggested previously.
making more of an ass out of himself with every post.
