The discovery highlights a dual danger to the survival of plants, shellfish, coral reefs, other marine species, and the climate. After finding that the western Arctic Ocean's acidity levels are rising three to four times faster than other ocean waters, an international team of scientists has sounde
A new study has found a link between fast-melting Arctic ice and ocean acidification
Arctic sea ice in this region is expected to disappear by 2050, if not sooner due to the region’s increasingly warm summers. Without a persistent ice cover to slow or otherwise mitigate the advance, the ocean’s chemistry will become more acidic as a consequence of this sea-ice retreat each summer. First, a quick refresher course on pH levels, which indicates how acidic or alkaline a given liquid is. Any liquid that contains water can be characterized by its pH level, which ranges from 0 to 14, with pure water considered neutral with a pH of 7. All levels lower than 7 are acidic, and all levels greater than 7 are basic or alkaline, with each full step representing a tenfold difference in the hydrogen ion concentration.
“You can’t just go by yourself,” Cai said. “This international collaboration is very important for collecting long-term data over a large area in the remote ocean. In recent years, we have also collaborated with Japanese scientists as accessing the Arctic water was even harder in the past three years due toCai said he and Qi both were baffled when they first reviewed the Arctic data together during a conference in Shanghai.
That would also change the pH level of the Arctic waters, they knew, reducing the alkaline levels of the seawater and reducing its ability to resist acidification. But how much? And how soon? It took them another decade to collect enough data to derive a sound conclusion on the long-term acidification trend.
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