Ocean acidification

What do policy makers really want to know about ocean acidification and its potential impacts? How can scientists, non-government entities, other stakeholders and community members help to answer their questions?

On October 7-11, the OA Alliance was invited to attend a Technical Cooperation project meeting between members of Ocean Acidification International Coordination Centre (OA-ICC) held in Guayaquil, Ecuador. The meeting brought together member governments from Latin America, Africa, Europe and Asia working to advance regional science as part of the Global Ocean Acidification Observing Network.

The OA Alliance presented a half-day workshop focused on best practices in communicating OA science to decision and policy makers and other stakeholders, drawing upon lessons learned and experiences from our national and subnational government members.

Continue reading ‘OA Alliance provides training with international partners: how to communicate OA to policy makers’

The increase of CO2 in the atmosphere is doing more than just warming the planet and threatening the lives of many terrestrial species. A large percentage of that carbon is actually reabsorbed by the oceans, causing a phenomenon known as ocean acidification — that is, our carbon emissions are literally changing the chemistry of ocean water and threatening ocean ecosystems worldwide. On Not Cool episode 21, Ariel is joined by Libby Jewett, founding Director of the Ocean Acidification Program at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), who explains the chemistry behind ocean acidification, its impact on animals and plant life, and the strategies for helping organisms adapt to its effects. She also discusses the vulnerability of human communities that depend on marine resources, the implications for people who don’t live near the ocean, and the relationship between ocean acidification and climate change.

Continue reading ‘Not Cool Ep 21: Libby Jewett on ocean acidification (audio)’

A foggy morning on the central California coastline is a picturesque scene of rolling waves, screeching gulls, and fishermen hauling hefty nets teeming with fish. If you look closely at the net you observe that it is a framework of lines working together to capture a greater amount of fish than a single fishing line could capture alone. In the same way, ocean observing systems can be thought of as a net to capture what is happening with our ocean’s chemistry. But a net with gaps or holes is not very efficient, whether it be in fishing or in observing. A newly funded project by Dr. Chris Edwards, a Professor at the University of California Santa Cruz (UCSC), along with collaborators at UCSC and the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) is taking a look at where ‘holes’ in our observing system are. The team will identify ways to fill those gaps in order to capture changing ocean chemistry along the California coast.

Continue reading ‘Strengthening the net: ocean acidification observations in California’

Continue reading ‘Ocean Acidification Course 2018 Sweden (INT) (video)’

The GO-SHIP Zotero bibliography is now synchronized with a Google scholar repository that allows for the tracking of citations and thus indicates uptake of GO-SHIP data.

Continue reading ‘GO-SHIP Bibilography available online’

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’