acidification tagged posts

Ocean acidification refers to the process of our planet’s oceans becoming more acidic due to the global increase in carbon dioxide emissions. Since the Industrial Revolution, experts estimate that Earth‘s oceans have absorbed more than a quarter of the atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) released from the burning of fossil fuels. Once in the ocean, the dissolved carbon dioxide undergoes a series of chemical reactions that increase the concentration of hydrogen ions while lowering the ocean’s pH and carbonate minerals — a process called ocean acidification.

Studies have shown that ocean acidification could have dramatic consequences for marine life and communities whose livelihoods depend on our ocean’s resources.

What causes ocean acidification?

When carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is ...

Acidification will threaten sediments that are building blocks for reefs. Corals already face risks from ocean temperatures, pollution and overfishing.

“Coral reefs will transition to net dissolving before end of century,” the Australian-led team of scientists wrote in the U.S. journal Science. “Net dissolving” means reefs would lose more material than they gain from the growth of corals.

Carbon dioxide, the main man-made greenhouse gas, forms a weak acid in water and threatens to dissolve the reef sediments, made from broken down bits of corals and other carbonate organisms that accumulate over thousands of years, it said.

The sediments are 10 times more vulnerable to acidification than the tiny coral animals that also extract chemicals directly from the sea water to build stony s...

The oceans are more acidic now than they have been for at least 300m years, due to carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels, and a mass extinction of key species may already be almost inevitable as a result, leading marine scientists warned on Thursday. An international audit of the health of the oceans has found that overfishing and pollution are also contributing to the crisis, in a deadly combination of destructive forces that are imperilling marine life, on which billions of people depend for their nutrition and livelihood.

In the starkest warning yet of the threat to ocean health, theInternational Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO) said: “This [acidification] is unprecedented in the Earth’s known history...