Ocean acidification, global warming, and the Great Barrier Reef

There is still sugar left in the water once the crystals have grown. But try to make another batch from the same sugary water and the process is likely to be slower, if not a dud, without replenishing the sugar concentration.

Generally speaking, Dr. Gledhill explains, shell-making follows a similar process. The oceans are supersaturated with dissolved calcium carbonate. The carbonate comes from the erosion of rocks on land over tens of thousands of years and longer. Shell-making creatures -- from tiny plankton to giant clams -- use some of the carbonates to make shells.

So do coral reefs. And their need for carbonates -- particularly a form called aragonite -- is endless. Even without destructive fishing practices from humans, reefs erode naturally as they are clobbered by storms or crumble under assaults from other forms of marine life, such as parrot fish.

(By the way, once the creatures die and sink to the sea floor, the carbon that once came from the atmosphere but now resides in their shells gets sequestered for very long periods of time. Think limestone deposits on land where prehistoric seas once spread.)

As humans add more CO2 to the atmosphere, however, the oceans take it up. So far, the oceans have absorbed roughly a third of the CO2 humans have added to the atmosphere since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. These days, some of the carbonates that would have been available for shell- or reef-building serve as a buffer to neutralize the weak carbonic acid that forms as CO2 and seawater mix. This makes less available for shell and reef-building -- slowing the calcification process. At worst, once waters become undersaturated with carbonates existing shells and reefs begin to dissolve.

Researchers working in the Southern Ocean and off the tip of Washington State's Olympic Peninsula have started to see some of this erosion locally. In the case of the Southern Ocean, at least, long-term increases in acidification are reinforced by natural swings in seawater chemistry that occur with seasonal changes in ocean circulation.

What Dr. De'ath actually saw 

For the Great Barrier reef, the slowdown appears to have begun with 1990 as the "tipping point."

Coral builds annual layers, similar to tree rings. The Doc and his team examined samples from 328 coral colonies. The colonies come from 69 reefs, covering most of the Great Barrier Reef's length. Coral ages ranged from 10 to 436 years.

By looking at how dense the coral skeletons are and at how much they grew from year to year, the team calculated a "calcification rate." The group found that calcification rates increased from the late 1500s through the early 1600s, then increased only gradually (with a few ups and downs) until 1990. The rate then fell significantly.

The group acknowledges that the causes for the Great Barrier Reef-wide decline aren't known. But the broad reach of the corals' equivalent of a housing slump weighs against a range of explanations -- including disease -- leaving warmer ocean-surface temperatures and acidification as the last co-conspirators standing.

From the standpoint of environmental "stress," the Great Barrier Reef faces several. The team argues that it's time to systematically sort through them to identify the most influential "straws" that threaten to break the proverbial camel's back.

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