NOAA/Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory (PMEL)-coauthored research article wins United Kingdom’s National Champion award and is shortlisted for the Frontiers Planet Prize.
Ocean Acidification: Another Planetary Boundary Crossed, published in Global Change Biology by lead author Professor Helen S. Findlay from Plymouth Marine Laboratory, with NOAA scientists Drs. Richard Feely (PMEL) and Liqing Jiang (CISESS / NESDIS-NCEI) and coauthors Greg Pelletier and Nina Bednaršek, has been named the United Kingdom’s National Champion, and has been nominated by the UK as one of 25 nominees worldwide for the international Frontiers Planet Prize. As the world’s largest global science competition dedicated to planetary health, the Prize awards three scientists $1 million each per year and fast-tracks transformative research with the power to shape real-world outcomes. One national champion is selected for each participating country, and from this international pool, a jury selects three awardees for the Frontiers Planet Prize.
The Frontiers Planet Prize recognizes transformational research that shows the greatest potential to address the world’s most urgent environmental challenges. With that in mind, the process is exceptionally rigorous and thorough, and engages with all stakeholders within the academic community.
The selections are made by the National Nominating Bodies (NNB). These are the universities and research institutions that have agreed to nominate their scientists for the Frontiers Planet Prize. Participating scientists submit their applications directly to their NNB.
Professor Findlay said, “Our research updated the ocean acidification planetary boundary for the first time since 2009 using new evidence and knowledge; including observations of periods of aragonite undersaturation in the Arctic, and evidence of real-world impacts on marine life. Boundaries must reflect the latest science for society to act on them, and this work is helping to broaden discussions about the ocean’s role in the climate system outside the scientific community. I would like to express my deepest thanks to the Frontiers Planet Prize for nominating me as the UK National Champion and to the excellent scientists who collaborated with me on this research.”
The Findlay et al. (2025) paper identified ocean acidification as one of nine “Planetary Boundaries,” that if exceeded could lead to unacceptable environmental change. Using revised estimates of pre-industrial aragonite saturation state, state-of-the-art data-model products, including uncertainties and assessing impact on ecological indicators, the authors demonstrated that by 2020, the average global ocean conditions had already crossed into the uncertainty range of the ocean acidification boundary.
“Ocean acidification is a major concern because of the potential impacts and consequences it has on marine ecosystem biodiversity and functioning, and ultimately the ecosystem services that a healthy ocean provides for our planet,” says Dr. Richard Feely, senior scientist at NOAA PMEL, and one of the coauthors of the paper.
The authors further extended the research to show that in the subsurface ocean up to 60% of the global subsurface ocean (down to 200 m) had crossed the planetary boundary for OA, compared to over 40% of the global surface ocean. These changes result in significant declines in suitable habitats for important calcifying species, including 43% reduction in habitat for tropical and subtropical coral reefs, up to 61% for polar pteropods, and 13% for coastal bivalves. By including these additional considerations, they suggested a revised boundary of 10% reduction from pre-industrial conditions more adequately prevents risk to marine ecosystems and their services; a benchmark that was surpassed by year 2000 across the entire surface ocean.
Special thanks to Daniel Jones, Plymouth Marine Laboratory for collaborating on this post.
For more information about Ocean Acidification visit
https://oceanacidification.noaa.gov/
https://www.pmel.noaa.gov/co2/story/Ocean%20Acidification