Ocean acidification has gained increasing recognition across national and international policy frameworks, such as national ocean action plans, the 2030 Agenda and the UNFCCC. To fully address and minimize its effects, scientists, governments, and end-users will benefit from co-designing science, monitoring, research, and syntheses that support informed choices about national mitigation, adaptation, and preparedness strategies. An overwhelming body of evidence documents ocean acidification, with potential significant impacts on marine species and ecosystems. The increase of atmospheric CO 2 due to fossil fuel burning is the main driver of ocean acidification in the open ocean. In the coastal zone, the variability in p CO 2 and pH is also driven by biological, near-shore and land-based processes, such as river run-off, stratification, and tides. The complexity of bridging chemical and biological changes associated with ocean acidification is often under-estimated. Today, projections rely mainly on proxy variables like pH, carbonate saturation states, dissolved oxygen, temperature, and salinity, and simplistic thresholds to speculate about the status and trends of biodiversity and ecosystem services. Ecosystem response to ocean acidification can be only assessed when considering factors such as adaptation to local chemical variability, evolutionary processes, ecological interactions, and the modulating role of other environmental drivers or stressors. Therefore, global, regional, and local impacts on biology and ecology, whether gradual or stepwise, are not fully resolved. Experimental work often over-simplifies these processes, for instance by focusing on single species and stressors, short-term responses, and static conditions that do not incorporate natural variability. Ocean observing and data are often focused on one or a handful of physical and biogeochemical parameters, but generally do not include biology and ecosystem. On the other hand, results from experimental work and from in situ observing efforts are not always well integrated into synthesis and modeling efforts. As a consequence, although data are being generated about ocean acidification changes and separately about some ecological changes, we are not able to evaluate whether a local resource or ecosystem service is changing due to ocean acidification. The UN Decade program “Ocean Acidification Research for Sustainability” (OARS) aims to provide a road map to fill these gaps. In line with the vision of OARS, this session aims at providing a platform for the ocean acidification community together with those who have a shared interest of protecting and conserving biodiversity in the face of global changes. It will promote actions to address the need for broader, more diverse, inclusive, and interdisciplinary collaboration and co-design of science and action. There is a need for purposeful efforts to facilitate inclusion of all interested researchers in monitoring and ocean acidification research networks. We will encourage submission of poster and presentation focusing on, for instance, co-design approach, new experimental designs encompassing the chemical and biological complexity (e.g. natural variability, ecology, evolution, multiple stressors), syntheses and meta-analyses, and unification of chemical and biological observations.
Lead Organizer: Sam Dupont, University of Gothenburg (sam.dupont@bioenv.gu.se)
Co-organizers:
Iris Hendriks, IMEDEA (CSIC-UIB) (iris@imedea.uib-csic.es)
Jan Newton, University of Washington (janewton@uw.edu)
Presentations
06:30 PM
Ocean acidification in the Gulf of Mexico: a multi-decadal evaluation of pH (5004)
Primary Presenter: Macarena Martín Mayor, University of South Florida (mmartinmayor@usf.edu)
Increasing anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions have led to clearly observable changes in carbon cycling throughout the global oceans. Repeat Gulf of Mexico Ecosystems and Carbon Cycle (GOMECC) cruises, led by NOAA, provide critical climate-grade carbonate chemistry datasets for monitoring ocean acidification (OA). The GOMECC surveys represent the only Gulf-wide research missions that have collected inorganic carbon parameters (i.e., pH, total alkalinity, total dissolved inorganic carbon, and partial pressure of CO2) simultaneously across the entire basin (and shelf-basin continuum). As such, these datasets are uniquely suited to evaluate acidification in the Gulf of Mexico and its implications for ocean ecosystems. Four GOMECC summertime surveys conducted between 2007-2021, encompassing ~346 stations, offer unparalleled insights into natural and anthropogenic OA dynamics in both the coastal and open-Gulf water column. Across the GOMECC time-series, three shelf-basin transects had full water-column sampling (Tampa, Louisiana, Texas Transects). Here we present observations of declining in situ pH and quantify anthropogenic contributions. For the three full water-column transects in the open-Gulf (>1000m water depth), an average pH decrease of 0.005 units was observed in the upper 500m and the observed yearly pH decrease in the surface mixed layer (~150m) was -0.0013/yr, consistent with the observations of Gomez et al., 2021. Consistent with expectations, pH changes at depths greater than 1000 meters were insignificant.
06:30 PM
DETECTION OF IMPURITIES IN M-CRESOL PURPLE WITH SIMCA FOR THE QUALITY CONTROL OF SPECTROPHOTOMETRIC PH MEASUREMENTS IN SEAWATER (5011)
Primary Presenter: Michael Fong, National Institute of Standards and Technology (michael.fong@nist.gov)
Accurate spectrophotometric pH measurements in seawater are critical to documenting long-term changes in ocean acidity and carbon chemistry, and for calibration of autonomous pH sensors. The recent development of purified indicator dyes greatly improved the accuracy of spectrophotometric pH measurements by removing interfering impurities that cause large pH-dependent biases in pH. However, some batches of purified indicators still contain significant residual impurities that lead to an unacceptably large bias in pH for oceanic measurements. We developed a model to detect impurities in mCP using a variant of the classification technique Soft Independent Modeling of Class Analogy (SIMCA). The classification model was trained with pure mCP spectra (350-750 nm) at pH 12 and tested on independent samples of mCP with varying levels of impurities (determined by HPLC) and measured on two different spectrophotometers. All the dyes identified as pure by the SIMCA model were sufficiently low in residual impurities that their biases in pH were <0.002 in buffered artificial seawater solutions. Laboratories can apply our model by measuring a small number of instrument standardization and model validation samples. We propose that this method be applied for verifying that residual impurities in batches of purified mCP do not significantly bias pH measurements and that this method represents a key step in the development of a measurement quality framework necessary to attain the uncertainty goals articulated by the Global Ocean Acidification Observing Network (GOA-ON) for “climate quality” measurements (i.e., 0.003 in pH).
06:30 PM
Ocean acidification research in the Mediterranean Sea: Status, trends and next steps (5223)
Primary Presenter: Abed El Rahman Hassoun, GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel (ahassoun@geomar.de)
Ocean acidification (OA) is a serious consequence of climate change with complex organism-to-ecosystem effects that have been observed through field observations but are mainly derived from experimental studies. Although OA trends and the resulting biological impacts are likely exacerbated in the semi-enclosed and highly populated Mediterranean Sea, some fundamental knowledge gaps still exist. These gaps are at tributed to both the uneven capacity for OA research that exists between Mediterranean countries, as well as to the subtle and long-term biological, physical and chemical interactions that define OA impacts. In this paper, we systematically analyzed the different aspects of OA research in the Mediterranean region based on two sources: the United Nation’s International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) Ocean Acidification International Coordination Center (OA-ICC) database, and an extensive survey. Our analysis shows that 1) there is an uneven geographic capacity in OA research, and illustrates that both the Algero-Provencal and Ionian sub-basins are currently the least studied Mediterranean areas, 2) the carbonate system is still poorly quantified in coastal zones, and long-term time-series are still sparse across the Mediterranean Sea, which is a challenge for studying its variability and assessing coastal OA trends, 3) the most studied groups of organisms are autotrophs (algae, phanerogams, phytoplankton), mollusks, and corals, while microbes, small mollusks (mainly pteropods), and sponges are among the least studied, 4) there is an overall paucity in socio-economic, paleontological, and modeling studies in the Mediterranean Sea, and 5) in spite of general resource availability and the agreement for improved and coordinated OA governance, there is a lack of consistent OA policies in the Mediterranean Sea. In addition to highlighting the current status, trends and gaps of OA research, this work also provides recommendations, based on both our literature assessment and a survey that targeted the Mediterranean OA scientific community. In light of the ongoing 2021-2030 United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development, this work might provide a guideline to close gaps of knowledge in the Mediterranean OA research.
06:30 PM
CARIBBEAN OCEAN ACIDIFICATION COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE AND NEEDS BASED ASSESSMENT (6096)
Primary Presenter: Natalie Lord, NOAA Ocean Acidification Program (natalie.lord@noaa.gov)
Ocean acidification (OA) threatens Caribbean ecosystems and the goods and services they provide (e.g., food security, employment, shoreline protection, etc.). In 2019, a resolution passed at the Cartagena Convention Conference of the Parties that called for collaboration and action for both regional bodies of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission and United Nations Environment Programme to encourage greater OA monitoring capacity and multidisciplinary, inclusive stakeholder engagement. In December 2021, an OA Caribbean Community of Practice (CoP) was established to strengthen capacity for research, monitoring, mitigation, and adaptation to OA and associated stressors in the region, including Small Island Developing States. The CoP recently distributed a needs-based assessment to analyze community needs and understand how to increase OA awareness and develop relationships with diverse stakeholders. This survey analyzes current OA activities, potential projects, key infrastructure, training needs, and interest in regional coordination. Here, we present the survey results and highlight suggested actions to build resilience and strengthen the connections between communities. OA may exacerbate the impacts of stressors that countries with waters adjacent to the Caribbean face today. This CoP aims to coordinate efforts and increase capacity to monitor and mitigate OA through in-person workshops, standardization of monitoring efforts, and communication training for science and policy while advancing diversity, inclusion, and accessibility in the region.
06:30 PM
NEW BAYESIAN SOLVER FOR OVERDETERMINED DATASETS OF SEAWATER CARBON DIOXIDE SYSTEM CHEMISTRY (6213)
Primary Presenter: Marina Fennell, University of California, Irvine (mfennell@uci.edu)
Researchers are deploying a global network of ocean sensors to help quantify carbonate chemistry changes related to ocean acidification. In addition to discrete laboratory-based measurements being taken on research cruises in-situ sensors are deployed to measure the numerous CO2-system parameters. This creates a need to ‘intercalibrate’ or validate the various types of data, especially in the case of overdetermined datasets where more than two CO2-system parameters are measured. Understanding the concentrations and associated uncertainties of the parameters rely on calculations of the CO2-system of seawater computed by solvers such as CO2SYS (Lewis and Wallace, 1998). A key drawback to the publicly available solvers is, despite the ever-increasing number of overdetermined datasets and measurements, the solvers themselves can only calculate and propagate errors in an exactly determined system–wherein two of the measured parameters are input. In this poster we present QUODcarb, a novel approach to solving the CO2-system equations in a way that can handle more than two measured input parameters. QUODcarb formulates a Bayesian problem and finds the most probable CO2-system state given the measurements and their precisions. The novel solver then summarizes the posterior probability distribution by approximating it using a Gaussian distribution, from which it draws uncertainty estimates. Come by our poster as we show how the novel Bayesian approach works with a few examples of up to five measurements input simultaneously (pH, pCO2, TA, DIC, CO3^2- into QUODcarb.
06:30 PM
Assessing the Impact of an Ocean Acidification Capacity Building Program (6517)
Primary Presenter: Sarah Flickinger, IAEA Marine Environment Laboratories (sflickinger89@gmail.com)
Ocean acidification (OA) is a global problem. While CO2 mitigation must be addressed at the global scale, the impacts of OA vary regionally. Thus, it is crucial to monitor local carbonate chemistry and effects of OA on locally adapted organisms to fully understand the impacts of OA and develop adaptation strategies. However, capacity to measure carbonate chemistry and OA effects on key species varies globally. The OA International Coordination Centre (OA-ICC), hosted by the International Atomic Energy Agency, was founded in 2012 to promote international coordination on OA through capacity building, communication, and science. The OA-ICC has hosted 33 OA training activities for over 600 participants from 98 countries. This multi-level capacity building program aims to increase OA research capacity through outcome-based courses and collaboration with several international partners. The program increases its impact by performing OA capacity evaluations to target training courses in low-capacity regions and through the identification of participants most likely to contribute to OA science based on prior course outcomes. By testing students’ general knowledge and determining contributions to the scientific literature pre- and post- course completion, the OA-ICC has built a dataset which enables improved selection of future course participants and teaching strategies. This model for evidence-based improvement of OA capacity building programs can be used by IGOs, NGOs, and others engaged in capacity development.
06:30 PM
Measuring Protons with Photons using The pHyter: A Hand-Held, Spectrophotometric pH Analyzer for Ocean Acidification Monitoring, Community Science and Education (6525)
Primary Presenter: Kalina Grabb, NOAA (kalinagrabb@gmail.com)
The oceans are acidifying, or decreasing in pH, yet pH measurements can be challenging, expensive, and/or require scientific training, leading to large uncertainties in pH within aquatic systems. Wide distribution of accessible, low-cost, and precise instruments is needed to increase pH measurements throughout coastal communities. This study developed a low-cost aquatic pH instrument, the pHyter, which is based on pH indicator chemistry. With similar precision to high-end pH meters, the pHyter costs a fraction of the price, can be used by the general public with minimal training, and can fit in the palm of your hand. Therefore, the pHyter is an ideal instrument for community-based science, education, and to increase public awareness of OA while expanding monitoring with high quality data. Here, we describe the development of the pHyter and the vision for the future as a tool that can be deployed globally and enable communities to sustain measurements of pH within their own waters.
06:30 PM
Development of a Carbon Seaglider for ocean acidification monitoring and inorganic carbon process studies (7123)
Primary Presenter: Claudine Hauri, University of Alaska Fairbanks (chauri@alaska.edu)
At present, the partial pressure of carbon dioxide (pCO2) is vastly undersampled throughout the oceans. This is due to conventional sampling approaches that rely primarily on discrete water sample collections from dedicated research cruises, underway measurements of surface ocean properties from transiting vessels, or time series measurements from in situ sensors on fixed moorings. This sparse sampling coverage greatly limits the understanding of the spatial and temporal variability of carbon dioxide, the processes that control its cycling, and how its accumulation in the ocean impacts marine life via ocean acidification. We developed a Carbon Dioxide Seaglider that autonomously measures pCO2 at high resolution throughout the water column by integrating the newly redesigned HydroC CO2T onto an M1 Seaglider. Here we present data from our 2022 sea trials in the Gulf of Alaska through a lens of data validation methods and data quality, that has led to high spatial and temporal resolution weather quality pCO2 data successfully collected on multiday underwater glider missions. We also present next steps and our vision of how a fleet of such Carbon Dioxide Seagliders, in combination with other oceanographic tools, will advance the understanding of regional manifestation of ocean acidification and the ocean’s role in mitigating climate change.
06:30 PM
NATURAL PH VARIABILITY IN A CHILEAN HOT SPOT FOR MARINE BIODIVERSITY: BASELINES FOR CONSERVATION AND DETECTION OF OCEAN ACIDIFICATION IMPACTS (7491)
Primary Presenter: Victor Aguilera, Centro de Estudios Avanzados en Zonas Aridas (victor.aguilera@ceaza.cl)
Marine reserves contribute to multiple objectives stated in the UNESCO's 2030 Sustainability Agenda, for example, capturing CO2 and regulating the climate, providing food and jobs, and increasing cultural heritage and biodiversity. At the central-northern Chilean coast, there is the national reserve Pingüino de Humboldt involving marine reserves in three small islands (Choros, Damas y Chañaral de Aceituno). The reserve was declared in 1990 becoming part of the National System of Protected Areas, having a management plan (Decree No. 159) since 2016 aimed at promoting scientific knowledge to generate baseline information for the conservation, management and marine exploitation of the natural resources of the marine reserve. However, till now, little is known about hydrographic and oceanographic processes regulating the productivity and biodiversity of the marine reserve, especially on basal trophic groups like plankton species. This information is critical to design the management and conservation efforts besides elucidating adaptive processes determining the tolerance to current and future environmental changes. The marine reserve is affected year-round by coastal upwelling promoting the irruption of cold, oxygen-poor and CO2 rich (>800 µatm) subsurface waters. While oxygen deficient water might impact aerobic metabolism, high acidity water might constrain the metabolism of calcifying organisms and hence, the efficiency of the biological pump supporting higher trophic levels. Furthermore, the region is also affected by El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) which, through high temperature waters, can synergistically impact basal biological processes supporting the biodiversity of the reserve. By means of discrete oceanographic campaigns and continuous measurements of temperature, oxygen, pH and salinity at two depths, the ENSO-Climate Change and the Carbon cycle in the Pacific South East (ECLIPSE) project is devoted to characterize the interannual pH variability in the marine reserve, as well as delineate biological responses to current and future progression of ocean acidification. Here we show preliminary results corresponding to eight months of observations during a period dominated by La Niña. Quality control tests and validation with reference material and higher accuracy measurements of pH, oxygen and salinity were carried before analysis. Stronger changes on hydrographic drivers occurred beyond the diurnal cycle such that under active upwelling, the marine reserve is exposed at either the surface (10 m) or depth (30 m) to pH levels as low as 7.77 and 7.62 pHT, respectively. Periods with low pH conditions can last up to ten days, and variability and magnitude of pH changes are attenuated with depth. Low pH events were also associated (r2>0.6) with cold (12°C) and hypoxic (<1 mg/L) conditions suggesting upwelling might be the main local forcing of hydrographic fluctuations affecting the marine reserve. The influence of this local natural pH variability affecting adaptive processes of keystone plankton species is being currently assessed by means of grazing experiments. Together with environmental information, these biological observations will allow a more comprehensive understanding of processes determining the productivity and biodiversity of the marine reserve.
SS066P Ocean Acidification 2.0 – From Chemistry to Society
Description
Time: 6:30 PM
Date: 7/6/2023
Room: Mezzanine