Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere enters the ocean at the surface and has been increasing the acidity of Pacific waters since the beginning of the industrial revolution more than 200 years ago.
Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere enters the ocean at the surface and has been increasing the acidity of Pacific waters since the beginning of the industrial revolution more than 200 years ago. A new study, led by University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa oceanographers, revealed that the ocean is acidifying even more rapidly below the surface in the open waters of the North Pacific near Hawaiʻi. Their discovery was published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans.
“Ocean acidification has far‐reaching consequences for ocean biology and the global climate,” said Lucie Knor, lead author of the study and postdoctoral researcher in the UH Mānoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST). “We expected some indicators of ocean acidification to be changing more rapidly below the surface, because that was what some global studies have previously discovered, but we were very surprised that this was true for every single ocean acidification indicator.”
Knor and co-authors analyzed a 35‐year record of ocean carbon measurements made by the Hawaiʻi Ocean Time-series program throughout the entire water column—from the surface to nearly 3 miles deep—at the open ocean field site 60 miles north of Oʻahu at Station ALOHA.
Read More at: University of Hawaii
Researchers with the CTD Rosette that collects HOT program water samples. (Photo Credit: Carolina Funkey)
