Ocean acidification

There are hundreds if not thousands of eyes on our changing ocean at any moment: Buoys, gliders, saildrones and ships measure carbonate chemistry and new ocean observing technologies are continually being created to monitor ocean acidification. As science and technology progress it is important to ensure that the most up to date knowledge is applied to the task at hand. NOAA’s Ocean Acidification Program (OAP) is teaming up with the U.S. Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS®) to fund four projects aimed at improving the observing system design for characterizing ocean acidification. This work will evaluate the capability of existing observations to characterize the magnitude and extent of acidification and explore alternative regional ocean acidification observing approaches. Ultimately this work will minimize errors in measurements, better integrate existing observations, and minimize costs of monitoring ocean acidification.

Continue reading ‘Optimizing acidification observations in a changing ocean’

The Community of Ocean Action on Ocean Acidification, led by David Osborn, IAEA Environment Laboratories and Bronte Tilbrook, CSIRO, Australia, and co-chair of GOA-ON, aims to support its members in implementing their ocean acidification-related Voluntary Commitments (VC) by exchanging progress reports, experiences, lessons learned and good practices. There are presently 258 Voluntary Commitments submitted for Sustainable Development Goal 14.3 on ocean acidification. These VCs cover a range of topics including mitigation, capacity building, policy, monitoring, among others.

The COA on OA has held two webinars, highlighting specific VCs and facilitating discussions among members of this community. A recording of the most recent webinar can be found here, and a video presentation by David Osborn providing an overview on this COA can be found here.

Continue reading ‘Community of Ocean Action on Ocean Acidification (COA on OA) videos online’

To detect potential effects of acidification on marine organisms, experimenters most commonly use within-experiment replication, but repeating the experiments themselves is rarely done. While the first approach suffices to detect major CO2 effects, other potentially important responses may get detected and robustly quantified only via serial experimentation. A study by Baumann et al. in Biology Letters comprises a meta-analysis of 20 standard CO2 exposure experiments conducted over six years on Atlantic silverside (Menidia menidia) offspring.

Continue reading ‘You better repeat it: serial ocean acidification experiments on fish early life stages’