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Ocean acidification related websites
Updated on Jun 15, 15
Created on Oct 05, 10
Category: Science
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Gwen Noda's List: Ocean Acidification
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Oct 05, 10
Census of Marine Life
Species: Water Column: Pteropods
Pteropod means "wing footed", referring to modification of this pelagic snail's foot that allows it to swim through the water. The group is somewhat artificial; it contains a sub-group of animals with shells, and a sub-group without shells, that are not closely related. Both are generally present year round in low numbers, with the shelled forms having been reported to form swarms or bloom under favorable conditions. They can be important items in the diets of fish, sometimes selected over other abundant prey.
The shelled group is primarily filter feeders. They swim to toward the waters surface and then secrete at mucus net that acts like a parachute as they sink. The parachute traps food as water passes through it, then the animals sucks it in and consumes the parachute plus all the food stuck to it. The naked group, sometimes called sea-angels, is specialized to eat the shelled group and some other soft-bodied animals.
Relatively little is known about pteropods in general other than distribution. They are thought to be primarily surface water species. It is thought that they have one generation per year in the Arctic.
There are 3 species known to exist in the arctic. -
Oct 05, 10
Orr_OnlineNature04095.pdf
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. -
Oct 05, 10
1. What are coccolithophores?
2. Coccolithophores and climate
3. Coccolithophores' life-cycle -
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Oct 05, 10
Media Advisory
The Ecological Society of America -
Oct 05, 10
Carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted to the atmosphere by human activities is being absorbed by the oceans, making them more acidic (lowering the pH the measure of acidity).
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Oct 05, 10
The Inter-Academy Panel on International Issues (or IAP) has today launched a statement signed by 100 of the world's leading science academies calling for ocean acidification to be placed on the agenda for the UNFCCC talks being held in Bonn over the next two weeks.
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Oct 05, 10
OCEANSP@CE, Issue 127, Monday, April 4, 1999
“Coral reefs are a vital resource, and an increasingly endangered one,” writes BBC Online Environment Correspondent Alex Kirby. The world's coral reefs, already facing several threats to their health, are now thought to be in further jeopardy. Scientists from the USA, France and Australia say their research suggests that increasing levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere may be imperiling the coral's ability to construct reefs. Their work is reported in the latest issue of the magazine Science. Many reefs have already been affected by bleaching, a process in which the coral loses its colour and turns a pallid white. Bleaching is a sign of stress, which is caused by several factors, including pollution, silt, changes in salinity, and rising water temperatures...... -
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Oct 06, 10
Corals and Plankton May Have Difficulty Making Shells
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Oct 06, 10
Jacqueline Ruttimann
(Jacqueline Ruttimann is a freelance writer in Maryland.)
Abstract
The rising level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is making the world's oceans more acidic. Jacqueline Ruttimann reports on the potentially catastrophic effect this could have on marine creatures. -
Oct 06, 10
Climate science from climate scientists
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