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Agua Agua Ciencias naturales Arctic studies show dire effect of ocean acidity

Arctic studies show dire effect of ocean acidity

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Pierre-Henry Deshayes (PHYSORG)

The icy Arctic waters around Norway's archipelago of Svalbard may seem pristine and clear, but like the rest of the world's oceans they are facing the threat of growing acidity.

Oceans have always absorbed part of the carbon dioxide, or CO2, present in the air, which in turn makes them acid. But with CO2 levels soaring, the scientific community is getting worried about acidification harming marine life.

 

Off the coast of Ny-Aalesund, a tiny coal mine village turned scientific outpost just 1,200 kilometres (745 miles) from the North Pole, researchers from nine European countries conducted in July an unprecedented effort to analyse the phenomenon.

To do so, they submerged nine tubes, each weighing two tonnes and the height of two double-decker busses, in the icy waters of the remote fjord framed by snow-capped mountains.

They then injected the water-tight tubes, called mesocosms, with CO2, to reproduce sea life under different acidity levels expected from now until 2150 with the aim of studying the potentially disastrous effects of acidification on marine life.

"It's here in the Arctic that the ocean will become corrosive the fastest," Jean-Pierre Gattuso, with France's National Center for Scientific Research, said, explaining why the researchers chose to turn these waters thick with icy slush into a laboratory.

The threat to the world's oceans is not so much the absolute concentration of acidity, but rather the pace at which it is changing, Gattuso explained, pointing out that "cold water swallow up gas faster than hot or temperate water."

Oceans absorb more than a quarter of the CO2 emitted by humans, which in one way is fortunate since this natural absorption mitigates the impact the gas has on the climate.

However the soaring levels of man-made CO2 in the atmosphere are proving devastating to the oceans themselves: since the beginning of the industrial era they have become 30 percent more acidic, reaching an acidity peak not seen in at least 55 million years, scientists say.

Fuente: PHYSORG