Draft part 1

Ocean Acidification’s Effect on our Oceans

Many people are aware of Global Climate change, but most people are unaware of the secondary consequences of this process. One of these consequences is ocean acidification.

This process is the slow acidification of the ocean due to rising amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere that subsequently gets absorbed by the ocean. Half of the worlds oxygen is produced by small photosynthetic organisms in the ocean. Just like land plants, they use carbon dioxide and convert it into oxygen. According to Scripps Institute of Oceanography, the ocean is responsible for absorbing 26% of all carbon emissions, this translates to 2.5 billion tons of carbon dioxide. This process is vital to all respiring organisms on the planet. According to ecology.com, the atmospheric CO2 at the Mauna Loa observatory has risen from 310ppm to 400ppm from 1960 to 2010.

This is a very significant amount that has caused global processes to change. Because of this large rise in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the ocean has been absorbing more than it can use for photosynthesis.

Because the ocean cannot use this carbon dioxide, but it is still contained within the water, it creates a more acidic environment-reducing the oceans pH. This is a harmful process for many reasons: animals that use calcium carbonate (all shelled organisms) are now being exposed to acidic conditions. As many people know due to the egg-in-vinegar experiment, acid dissolves calcium, which means it dissolves shell. This not only puts our favorite shellfish at risk-it harms the microorganisms that are vital to our survival. These small organisms are known as plankton. There are animal plankton (zooplankton) and plant plankton (phytoplankton). The latter are the ones that create half of our oxygen, one type pictured below.

The skeletons that make up these small plants come in two varieties: calcium or silicate. Silicate organisms are resistant to acidification, leaving the calcium carbonate phytoplankton vulnerable. This causes their skeletons to weaken and in some studies, they dissolve almost completely in high enough concentrations. This is very troubling for many reasons, one being that coccolithophores are responsible for the biggest biomass of phytoplankton in the ocean.

Most people have come to terms with the reality of Global Climate Change (no longer referred to as global warming, since climate change actually causes certain places on earth to become cooler), but there are surprisingly, still those that believe it is all a lie. Many people say “but isn’t it normal for the earths temperature to fluctuate? Hasn’t this happened before?” To address this assumption-yes, the earths temperature and CO2 does fluctuate globally. The overall problem with this theory, however, is that while the earths carbon dioxide levels do fluctuate, ever since the industrial revolution, there has been a very unnatural spike in global CO2 concentrations, shown in this graph provided by ReviseScience.com:

The rates of carbon emissions are not decreasing, and it is something people need to acknowledge.