Acid Oceans

Interesting article – coral bleaching is something we talk about from time to time. As a diver and a 3Reefer this is very scary to me – should be to all actually. Thought I would share the article and link. enjoy, John.



http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/02/110214102126.htm

Acid Oceans Demand Greater Reef Care

ScienceDaily (Feb. 13, 2011) — The more humanity acidifies and warms the world's oceans with carbon emissions, the harder we will have to work to save our coral reefs.


That's the blunt message from a major new study by an international scientific team, which finds that ocean acidification and global warming will combine with local impacts like overfishing and nutrient runoff to weaken the world's coral reefs right when they are struggling to survive.
Modelling by a team led by Dr Ken Anthony of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and The University of Queensland's Global Change Institute has found that reefs already overfished and affected by land runoff are likely to be more vulnerable to increasing CO2 in the atmosphere caused by the burning of fossil fuels.
Their study is the first to integrate global scale processes, such as warming and acidification, with the local factors overfishing and runoff, to predict the combined impact on coral reefs.
"As CO2 levels climb to 450-500 parts per million - as they are now expected to do by 2050 - how well we manage local impacts on reefs like fishing and runoff will become absolutely critical as to whether they survive as coral reefs, or are overtaken by algae that compete with corals for space on reefs," Dr Anthony says.
Warmer conditions cause periodic mass coral deaths by bleaching, while acidifying sea water - due to CO2 dissolving out of the atmosphere - weakens the corals by interfering with their ability to form their skeletons, making them more vulnerable to impact by storms. If the corals are also affected by heavy nutrient runoff from the land - which fertilizes the algae - and overfishing of parrot fishes and others that keep the reefs clear of weed, then corals can struggle to re-establish after a setback, he explains. "In those situations, the reef can become completely overgrown by algae."
The team's modelling, which they say is on the conservative side, has far-reaching implications for the preservation even of well-managed reefs such as Australia's Great Barrier Reef - and extremely serious implications for reefs in developing countries, where most reefs are located and where reefs face high levels of stress from human activities.
"Put simply, our model indicates that the more CO2 we humans liberate, the harder it will become for coral reefs, as we know them, to survive. This means they will need all the help they can get in the way of good management to prevent their being overgrown by sea weeds," he adds.
"Coral reefs in developing nations, where most of the world's reefs occur and overfishing and nutrification remain key concerns, are particularly vulnerable, highlighting the need to continue to build capacity amongst reef managers and governments in areas like SE Asia," the team warns in their report, which was recently published in the journal Global Change Biology.
"A failure to rapidly stabilize and reduce the concentration of CO2 in the Earth's atmosphere is likely to lead to significant loss of key (coral) framework builders such as Acropora, irrespective of the effectiveness of local management," the scientists conclude.
"However local reef management efforts to maintain high grazing fish populations and prevent runoff of silt, fertilisers and sewage from the land will play a critical role in maintaining coral resilience while CO2 concentrations are stabilized," they add.
The study, which is the first to quantify the relative importance of carbon emissions and local disturbances in compromising reef health, can be used to optimise future management practises of coral reefs. It makes clear that both policy changes on emissions and local management measures are required to secure a future for coral reefs.

 

Interesting, thanks for posting. Ocean acidification has been kind of overlooked by a lot of people. Output of CO2 though has just skyrocketed since the industrial revolution. I know a few years back, people found that the CO2 in the atmosphere was less than what they expected and couldn't figure out where it was going. Finally, someone figured out that it was being sucked up by the ocean. IMO, shouldn't really be much of a surprise to any reefkeeper whose dealt with PH problems though... When combined with warming, the effects certainly needs to be considered.

 

Exactly ! and yet I wonder how many people know the effects of CO2 - I suspect when asked the average joe on the street can point up to the sky and not know too much beyond that. After all, if its not sensationalized in the media people can’t form an opinion !
Oh how the sheep follow……

 

What I don't understand is that in the history of the earth CO2 levels are much lower the they have then say time of the dinosaurs and global average temps are still lower then what they actually should be. Scientists believe temperatures are still levelling out from coming out of the little iceage we experienced not to long ago. Now I am not saying that fossil fuels aren't speeding up the process of warming and CO2 rising. Just saying CO2 levels aren't at historical highs and neither are temperatures.

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Where are you getting this from? Most reports estimate it at record highs. As far as I know, it's pretty settled that it's higher than any time in the last 650000-800000 years, but possibly going back significantly further.
Last Time Carbon Dioxide Levels Were This High: 15 Million Years Ago, Scientists Report

 

This diagram....


and this was the article.
American Thinker: CO2 Fairytales in Global Warming

It is a few years old, but I read it other places too when I was researching for a paper in one of my classes. Again I am not saying that global warming isn't happening and CO2 is good for the planet. What I am saying is the fact people have only been really noticing this stuff for maybe a hundred years and we can't pretend to know what the world should or shouldn't have in the way of CO2 and what the temps should or shouldn't be.

 

American Thinker is a political blog, not a scientific resource. Do you know there information comes from, they don't appear to say. The only reference they list is to something from 1991 from something called EarthQuest. I have no idea what that is.... and the chart comes from www.geofcraft.com I am not sure what that was either, but it doesn't appear to exist anymore. I know it's speculated hundreds of millions of years ago CO2 levels were much higher than today. There are not core records going back that far though and these estimates come from less precise sampling techniques. As far as I know, for the time periods we can most accurately sample CO2, it appears to be at an all-time high.

The problem is there is a lot of disinformation on this stuff. There is misleading info in both directions though, I don't mean to say that the fanatical end of the world stuff is right either, there certainly are a lot of unkowns. There is a big difference between science and how it is portrayed in the media and blogosphere. The media and blogosphere always pick the extremes, because that is what sells. Really the sources of information are very important. I think CO2 is very high and climbing. I don't know what that means as I have no idea how the earths feedback mechanisms will respond.

Seems like we should respect our home though; non-scientifically speaking, it's clear we aren't....




The article discussed in Science daily was published in the peer reviewed journal Science in 2009
:
Coupling of CO2 and ice sheet stability over major climate transitions of the last 20 million years.
Tripati AK, Roberts CD, Eagle RA.
Science. 2009 Dec 4;326( 5958 ) : 1394-7. Epub 2009 Oct 8.

For more of a genneral overview, I guess wikipedia is ok. It does at least provide references LOL.
Carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/FONT]

 

We rented a PBS documentary the other day on Cuba. They talked about the reefs there and how they're so much healthier than reefs everywhere else, even when they're not that far away from reefs in Florida that are in bad condition. They attributed some of that to the fact that when the US put an embargo on Cuba, they couldn't get chemical fertilizer and were basically "forced" to go organic, therefore they have had 50 years of non-chemical runoff onto their reefs. It was called "Cuba: The Accidental Eden" and was really interesting.

 

I actually just went to Cuba, snorkeling and the reef I went to was a graveyard...was very disappointed

 

Big tourist area?