{"id":113894,"date":"2025-08-27T14:11:15","date_gmt":"2025-08-27T14:11:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/113894\/"},"modified":"2025-08-27T14:11:15","modified_gmt":"2025-08-27T14:11:15","slug":"new-study-reveals-rapid-pace-of-ocean-acidification-in-pacific-waters-near-hawai%ca%bbi-big-island-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/113894\/","title":{"rendered":"New study reveals rapid pace of ocean acidification in Pacific waters near Hawai\u02bbi : Big Island Now"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

University of Hawai\u02bbi at M\u0101noa oceanographers have revealed that the ocean is acidifying more rapidly than predicted below the surface in the open waters near Hawai\u02bbi.<\/p>\n

\"\"Researchers with the CTD Rosette that collects HOT program water samples. (Courtesy of Carolina Funkey)<\/p>\n

Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere enters the ocean at the surface and has been increasing the acidity of Pacific waters since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution more than 200 years ago. However, a new study reveals how quickly the water is acidifying.<\/p>\n

\u201cOcean acidification has far-reaching consequences for ocean biology and the global climate,\u201d said Lucie Knor, lead author of the study and postdoctoral researcher in the University of Hawai\u02bbi at M\u0101noa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology<\/a>. \u201cWe expected some indicators of ocean acidification to be changing more rapidly below the surface because that was what some global studies have previously discovered, but we were very surprised that this was true for every single ocean acidification indicator.\u201d<\/p>\n

Burning fossil fuels creates carbonic acid and increases the ocean\u2019s acidity, which can lead to consequences such as weakened coral reefs, harm to shellfish, and impacts on the entire marine food web.<\/p>\n

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Knor and co-authors analyzed a 35-year record of ocean carbon measurements made by the Hawai\u02bbi Ocean Time-series program throughout the entire water column\u2014from the surface to nearly three miles deep\u2014at the open ocean field site 60 miles north of O\u02bbahu at Station ALOHA.<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Station ALOHA in the Pacific Ocean (Courtesy of Lucie Knor)<\/p>\n

They found that in all layers, there are increases of carbon from natural decomposition of sinking organisms. In some layers, accelerated acidification is associated with fresher and colder waters. Their discovery was published in the \u201cJournal of Geophysical Research: Oceans.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cDeeper waters are already naturally quite acidic in the North Pacific, so quickly increasing acidity could negatively impact plankton species and other organisms that live below the surface,\u201d Knor said. \u201cIn the long run, these changes in ocean chemistry also make it harder for the ocean to keep taking up more CO\u2082 from the atmosphere.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Researchers, fisheries managers, and coral conservationists are concerned with the combined impacts of ocean acidity events and marine heat waves, which have increased due to unusual conditions in the ocean and atmosphere, and strong, multi-year El Ni\u00f1o events.<\/p>\n

Subsurface waters at Station ALOHA are formed farther north in the Pacific, so changes in seawater properties impacted by evolving environmental conditions in other areas of the North Pacific are then transported by ocean currents into the deeper layers of the ocean around Hawai\u02bbi.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe illustrate that regional-scale changes in source water chemistry and circulation are substantial drivers of the subsurface intensification of ocean acidification around Hawai\u02bbi,\u201d said Christopher Sabine, co-author of the article and School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology oceanography professor.<\/p>\n

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Currently, the research team is investigating the carbon specifically from human-made sources in the water column at Station ALOHA and how that is changing over time in different layers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"University of Hawai\u02bbi at M\u0101noa oceanographers have revealed that the ocean is acidifying more rapidly than predicted below…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":113895,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[74221,54462,74222,74223,74224,58629,192,12418,74225,74226,74227,74228,74229,74230,74231,74232,74233,74234,79,74235,44443,74236],"class_list":["post-113894","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-acidification","tag-carbon-dioxide","tag-carolina-funkey","tag-christopher-sabine","tag-coral-reefs","tag-el-nino","tag-environment","tag-fossil-fuels","tag-hawaii-ocean-time-series","tag-industrial-revolution","tag-journal-of-geophysical-research-oceans","tag-lucie-knor","tag-marine-food-web","tag-north-pacific","tag-oceanographers","tag-oahu","tag-open-waters","tag-plankton-species","tag-science","tag-station-aloha","tag-university-of-hawaii-at-manoa","tag-university-of-hawaii-at-manoa-school-of-ocean-and-earth-science-and-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113894","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113894"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113894\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/113895"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}