Carbon Dioxide below the Surface

As if global warming weren’t scary enough already, rising temperatures and sea levels, droughts, storms, and island villages falling in the waves, we’ve got another menace lurking just under those encroaching waves. The carbon dioxide we’ve been pumping out since the industrial revolution isn’t just accumulating in our atmosphere and trapping radiant heat, about half of all the anthropogenic carbon produced has been absorbed by the oceans.
That means that if it weren’t for the oceans, we’d be facing twice the impacts of atmospheric carbon than we are now, leaving scientists and policy-makers to celebrate the saving grace of the ocean’s carbon sink. It turns out however, that the oceans can’t just passively soak up carbon like a sponge and continue unaffected. It’s like knowing that although a frat boy can pound down ten beers in an hour and still walk away to flirt with the nearest short skirt, he’s not going to escape the consequences of a hangover the next morning.
Our oceans are approaching the inevitable hangover as we speak, they’ve taken on more than they can handle, and like many a frat boy’s who’s had one too many, the oceans don’t know how to stop. At the water’s surface, gases are exchanged with the atmosphere. When the atmosphere has more CO2 than the water, the oceans absorb it. In the water, a chemical reaction called the carbon buffer takes place, with the dissolved carbon dioxide reacting with the water to create a weak acid. This acid then breaks up, releasing hydrogen ions and raising the pH of the water. The hydrogen ions are the dangerous part of this equation, because they bind tightly to carbonate in the water.
Carbonate is an important part of the oceans chemistry, because when it isn’t being stolen by increasing armies of hydrogen ions, it binds with calcium to make calcium carbonate. Calcium carbonate is used by organisms like mollusks, crustaceans, and the phytoplankton that provide the base of the marine food web to make their shells and structural support. When the acidity of the waters increase, the hydrogen steals the carbonate away, so that it is no longer available to these organisms, and their shells will even start dissolving.
It’s already happening. The global oceans have decreased in pH by about 0.1, a 30% increase in hydrogen ions. Calcium carbonate is less stable in cold water, so the polar regions are feeling the effects faster. Alaska’s waters will be without sufficient calcium carbonate by the end of the century, if current Co2 emissions continue, and the global oceans could experience a drop in pH of 0.5. That kind of drastic shift in ocean chemistry could permanently alter the ecosystems, especially as the environment gets too acidic for the phytoplankton that support the entire system. We need to start paying attention to all the effects that our out of control fossil fuel use is having, not just above the surface, but below as well, if we’re going to save our marine ecosystems from a threat this serious. Because unlike a hangover, the effects of absorbing too much CO2 will take thousands of years to cycle out.
“For an organism that lives in the water, the two most important factors are temperature and acidity. So this is just a profound, profound change. It is going to send all kinds of ripples through marine ecosystems because of the importance of calcium carbonate for so many organisms in the oceans, including those at the base of the food chain….you could have food chain collapses, and fisheries ultimately with them."
–Thomas Lovejoy
Heinz Center for Science, Economics and the Environment

Maybe for the Delaware Gazette?

Global Warming seems like it’s everywhere these days, on the news and in the papers, scientists, politicians, your neighbors at a potluck, everybody is talking about the earth’s climate changes, and the human activities are causing it. A few years ago, global warming was an if, suddenly, it’s become a when. But still, enjoying a beautiful Ohio summer, it’s easy to ask ourselves, “is it really hotter this year?” “It doesn’t really feel any different from last year.”
Fly a few thousand miles on a direct Delta flight from Cincinnati to Anchorage, Alaska, like I did last month, and suddenly, all those climate change discussions are staring you in the face. Up here, it’s not even when, but right now. I moved up here for a summer conservation job and quickly learned how important Alaska’s environment is to all of us right now, like a canary in a coal mine.
Well, Alaska could probably use a little global warming, people joke. If only it were that simple. Global warming, as we’ve all come to appreciate the term, isn’t really a very accurate description. The climate isn’t simply warming, it’s changing in so many complicated ways that our best scientists can’t hope to model it yet. The best phrase I’ve heard recently was that we’re all facing, and Alaskans now and Ohioans surely soon to follow; a Climate Disruption.
What does that really mean, a climate disruption? Up here, it means that it’s getting warmer, yes, and windier, and stormier along the ocean coasts where sea ice used to offer protection from winter waves before it succumbed to the increasing temperatures and melted. The melting ice is moving away from land, and taking marine mammals like seals, walrus and polar bears away from their critical food supply on the shallow ocean shelf. It’s also taking them away from the subsistence hunters who depend on their flesh to feed their families and their cultures.
The production in the ocean is shifting, so that formerly arctic species like king crab and herring are in rapid decline, and other species, like Walleye Pollock, are reproducing rapidly. Some commercial fisherman are facing the extinction of their industry, others are reeling ‘em in. The distributions, the migrations, the start and end of the seasons, it’s all shifting, and each piece of the puzzle that makes up this ecosystem is shifting just a little bit differently. That’s why we call it a disruption, because when you try to put all the new puzzle pieces back together again, you’re not going to get the same picture.
And why should we care, a 7 hour flight away in Ohio? Not just because the waters that produce more half of the United States’ fish supply are potentially in jeopardy. We’re being motivated by more than just fish sticks here. Alaska might seem far away, but what’s happening there isn’t as removed from us as we’d like it to be. Sure, we don’t have coastal villages at risk of sinking into rising seas or picturesque endangered polar bears to save, but climate disruption is soon to be playing on a climate near you. We can’t be sure yet what forms it will take; hotter, drier, new pests or failing crops, but we can be sure that if we don’t make some serious changes to our fossil fuel consumption, we’ll find out what disruption in Ohio looks like.
So I know that it’s easy to forget about Alaska, to ignore that little bird, while climate change remains a concept and not a consequence in our daily lives, I think it’s important that we make ourselves pay attention to the unpleasant reality at hand. It grows while we ignore it. So now is our time, if not sooner, to do some disrupting of our own, and change the course of carbon dioxide emissions, before our Ohio landscape starts to feel as fragile as it does up here. Consider it a postcard from Alaska.

virginity??

Okay, confession: this is my first blog. I'm a little overwhelmed, but I like to write, so here we go. About me: I like trees. Seriously, I'm sure you figured that out from the name. I also like to play outside. And I'm the kind of chick who reads Scientific American for fun. I'm newly in Alaska, working for a conservation group and running around as much as I can for the summer. I want to write about the environment, hopefully no bad rambling nature poetry or cliched global warming tirade, but the stuff that's going on that actually interesting. It'll form with time, right? Ready...set...go.....