I've been aware of the possible disaster of ocean acidification for a very long time, but there is another issue related to ocean chemistry I just ran across that scares the crap out of me. The implications are huge.
I have a degree in geology and had a minor in chemistry, then went on to almost finish a masters in meteorology. I was mainly interested in the theoretical fluid dynamical aspects of weather then, but since I had a strong background in chemistry I also took a fair amount of coursework related to pollution issues. My initial professional career was involved with air pollution measurement and control.
But this article brought out an issue that is so basic that maybe it slips under the radar. In warmer liquids, less gasses dissolve. As the ocean warms up we can expect that there will be a decrease in dissolved oxygen. A new study released by the National Center for Atmospheric Research has some startling conclusions. We might be seeing this affect ocean life in a relatively short time frame. Maybe less than 2 decades.
"Loss of oxygen in the oceans is one of the serious side effects of a warming atmosphere, and a major threat to marine life," said Matthew Long, who is the lead author of the study. "Since oxygen concentrations in the ocean naturally vary depending on variations in winds and temperature at the surface, it's been challenging to attribute any de-oxygenation to climate change. This new study tells us when we can expect the effect from climate change to overwhelm the natural variability."
The article I ran across is here
If you are not especially trained in hard sciences, and this sounds kind of scary, I'm not going to be reassuring. This is fucking scary. Little Nemo needs oxygen just as much as we do, but a warmer atmosphere due to increasing CO2 won't affect the amount of O2 we air breathers have available. The CO2 concentrations are going up fast, but 400 parts per million is only 0.04% of the total atmosphere. The increase CO2 is not significantly altering the basic oxygen/nitrogen ratio in the atmosphere. It's just screwing up the radiation balance (yeah, that’s an understated “just”, but we’ll be able to breath just fine as the broil box heats up).
But the life under the ocean surface relies on dissolved oxygen. And it's just basic chemistry that as we continue to turn the heat up, the amount of O2 available is going to decrease. While the exact amount of dissolved oxygen in any given part of the ocean is highly variable and related to many different things (think of the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico due to fertilizer pollution), we might be close to crossing a point where natural variability starts to be overwhelmed by the artificial forcing from greenhouse gas emissions.
What a tangled web we weave. And we are pulling at loose threads without concern for what might be undone.