{"id":60087934,"date":"2025-06-26T10:10:37","date_gmt":"2025-06-26T09:10:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dialogue.earth\/?post_type=news_digest&#038;p=60087934"},"modified":"2025-07-01T10:16:18","modified_gmt":"2025-07-01T09:16:18","slug":"ocean-acidification-is-worse-than-we-thought","status":"publish","type":"news_digest","link":"https:\/\/dialogue.earth\/en\/digest\/ocean-acidification-is-worse-than-we-thought\/","title":{"rendered":"Ocean acidification is worse than we thought"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>The ocean\u2019s climate-change driven slide towards acidity could be worse than previously realised, scientists have warned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As humanity burns ever more fossil fuels, much of the resulting carbon dioxide ends up in the ocean, where it shifts marine chemistry in ways that makes seawater less alkaline and more acidic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It has long been known that this \u201cocean acidification\u201d has major negative consequences for marine life, especially so-called \u201ccalcifying species\u201d such as corals and molluscs that make hard shells. This can devastate fishers who rely on these species (see: <a href=\"https:\/\/dialogue.earth\/en\/ocean\/ocean-acidification-us-pacific-shellfish-farms\/\">Imperilled by ocean acidification<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Ocean acidification is one of nine \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.stockholmresilience.org\/research\/research-news\/2023-09-13-all-planetary-boundaries-mapped-out-for-the-first-time-six-of-nine-crossed.html\">planetary boundaries<\/a>\u201d \u2013 limits to systems key to keeping Earth\u2019s environment in a state similar to how it has been for human existence. Previously three of the nine boundaries were not deemed crossed. That may no longer be the case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Researchers behind a new analysis say that around 60% of deeper waters and 40% of surface waters have crossed the acidification boundary. The boundary is defined as a 20% reduction from the pre-industrial averages of \u201caragonite saturation state\u201d, a a chemical measure which indicates the degree of acidification.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But they also believe the boundary should be revised from 20% to just 10%. Writing in the journal <a href=\"https:\/\/onlinelibrary.wiley.com\/doi\/10.1111\/gcb.70238\">Global Change Biology<\/a>, they say this level is \u201ca more stringent and ecologically meaningful target\u201d and that 20% \u201cprovides insufficient protection of many crucial ocean habitats beyond the surface waters\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And here is the rub: that shift would mean the boundary was crossed in the 1980s, with the whole ocean surface having passed it sometime in the 2000s, according to Helen Findlay of the Plymouth Marine Laboratory in the UK and her colleagues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cLooking across different areas of the world, the polar regions show the biggest changes in ocean acidification at the surface. Meanwhile, in deeper waters, the largest changes are happening in areas just outside the poles and in the upwelling regions along the west coast of North America and near the equator,\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/pml.ac.uk\/news\/ocean-acidification-more-advanced-than-previously-thought\/\">says Findlay<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cMost ocean life doesn\u2019t just live at the surface \u2013 the waters below are home to many more different types of plants and animals. Since these deeper waters are changing so much, the impacts of ocean acidification could be far worse than we thought.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The ocean\u2019s climate-change driven slide towards acidity could be worse than previously realised, scientists have warned. As humanity burns ever more fossil fuels, much of the resulting carbon dioxide ends up in the ocean, where it shifts marine chemistry in ways that makes seawater less alkaline and more acidic. It has long been known that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":60006658,"template":"","categories":[50039901],"tags":[513,537],"country":[50003615],"digest-collection":[50039911,50039912],"class_list":["post-60087934","news_digest","type-news_digest","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ocean","tag-carbon-emissions","tag-ecosystems","country-world-2"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.0 (Yoast SEO v26.0) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Ocean acidification is worse than we thought | Dialogue Earth<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/dialogue.earth\/en\/digest\/ocean-acidification-is-worse-than-we-thought\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Ocean acidification is worse than we thought\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The ocean\u2019s climate-change driven slide towards acidity could be worse than previously realised, scientists have warned. 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