Ocean acidification

On October 29, the National Science Foundation (NSF) announced a $53 million grant — shared among a consortium of the country’s top ocean research institutions — to build a global network of chemical and biological sensors that will monitor ocean health.

Scientists at Princeton University, Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI), University of Washington, Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution will use this grant to build and deploy 500 robotic ocean monitoring floats around the globe. The new program builds on the successful Southern Ocean Carbon and Climate Observations and Modeling (SOCCOM) project based at Princeton that has deployed similar floats in the ocean around Antarctica, proving their usefulness as year-round reporters of ocean chemistry and biological activity.

Since 2008 the NOAA’s Ocean Acidification program (OAP) buoy has been installed in La Parguera, Puerto Rico where oceanographic studies of chemistry, biology, geology, and physics of the Caribbean Sea have been conducted for more than 50 years. Below is a video on La Parguera and Ocean Acidification.

Continue reading ‘La Parguera (video; in Spanish)’

SOCAT version 2020 was released on the 16th of June 2020, containing data submitted on or before 15th of January 2020. Data submissions for the next version are welcome at any time, and will be included in the next SOCAT release in 2021.

SOCAT version 2020 contains 28.2 million in situ surface ocean fCO2 (fugacity of CO2) measurements for the global ocean and coastal seas with an accuracy < 5 μatm, while a further 2.3 million fCO2 values with an accuracy of 5 to 10 μatm are made available separately. The Surface Ocean CO2 Atlas (www.socat.info) documents the increase in surface ocean CO2 (carbon dioxide), a critical measure as the oceans are taking up one quarter of the global CO2 emissions from human activity. The SOCAT community-led synthesis product is a key step in the value chain based on in situ inorganic carbon measurements of the oceans, which provides policy makers with essential information on ocean CO2 uptake in climate negotiations. The global need for accurate knowledge of ocean CO2 uptake and its variation makes sustained funding for in situ surface ocean CO2 observations imperative. The annual SOCAT release is a Voluntary Commitment for SDG 14.3 (#OceanAction20464) and contributes to the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development.

Continue reading ‘SOCAT Version 2020 released’

Submission Deadlines
30 June 2020: Abstract
31 October 2020: Manuscript

About this Research Topic
Under the global climate change, the world’s oceans are warming more quickly than previously thought. The ocean warming could lead to remarkable changes in marine environments, such as ocean deoxygenation, acidification, and sea ice melting. Marine ecosystems are undergoing significant changes due to the current environmental changes caused by a rapidly warming ocean.

Microbial communities are diverse and productive assemblages, including phytoplankton, protists, and the two main groups of prokaryotes (Bacteria and Archaea). Since they drive major biogeochemical cycles and support higher food-webs globally, microbes are a vital component of the marine ecosystem. Moreover, microbes can be an important indicator for the environmental changes, because physiological and ecological alterations in microbial communities can herald changes not only in pathways of energy transfer through food-web but also in biogeochemical cycles. Considering the microbial communities’ pivotal roles in ongoing climate change, it is important to understand which current changes in microbial communities have occurred to date and which future changes might arise under ongoing environmental forcing of the warming ocean.

Continue reading ‘Call for manuscripts: Microbial response to a rapidly changing marine environment: global warming and ocean acidification’