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Anthropogenic ocean acidification over the twenty-first century and its impact on calcifying organisms

Nature volume 437, pages 681–686 (2005)Cite this article

Abstract

Today's surface ocean is saturated with respect to calcium carbonate, but increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations are reducing ocean pH and carbonate ion concentrations, and thus the level of calcium carbonate saturation. Experimental evidence suggests that if these trends continue, key marine organisms—such as corals and some plankton—will have difficulty maintaining their external calcium carbonate skeletons. Here we use 13 models of the ocean–carbon cycle to assess calcium carbonate saturation under the IS92a ‘business-as-usual’ scenario for future emissions of anthropogenic carbon dioxide. In our projections, Southern Ocean surface waters will begin to become undersaturated with respect to aragonite, a metastable form of calcium carbonate, by the year 2050. By 2100, this undersaturation could extend throughout the entire Southern Ocean and into the subarctic Pacific Ocean. When live pteropods were exposed to our predicted level of undersaturation during a two-day shipboard experiment, their aragonite shells showed notable dissolution. Our findings indicate that conditions detrimental to high-latitude ecosystems could develop within decades, not centuries as suggested previously.

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Figure 1: Increasing atmospheric CO2 and decreasing surface ocean pH and [CO32-].
Figure 2: The aragonite saturation state in the year 2100 as indicated by Δ[CO32-]A.
Figure 3: Climate-induced changes in surface [CO32-].
Figure 4: Key surface carbonate chemistry variables as a function of p CO 2 .
Figure 5: Average surface [CO32-] in the Southern Ocean under various scenarios.
Figure 6: Shell dissolution in a live pteropod.

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Acknowledgements

We thank M. Gehlen for discussions, and J.-M. Epitalon, P. Brockmann and the Ferret developers for help with analysis. All but the climate simulations were made as part of the OCMIP project, which was launched in 1995 by the Global Analysis, Integration and Modelling (GAIM) Task Force of the International Geosphere–Biosphere Programme (IGBP) with funding from NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration). OCMIP-2 was supported by the European Union Global Ocean Storage of Anthropogenic Carbon (EU GOSAC) project and the United States JGOFS Synthesis and Modeling Project funded through NASA. The interannual simulation was supported by the EU Northern Ocean Carbon Exchange Study (NOCES) project, which is part of OCMIP-3.

Author information

Author notes

  1. Patrick Monfray

    Present address: Laboratoire d'Etudes en Géophysique et Océanographie Spatiales, UMR 5566 CNES-CNRS-IRD-UPS, F-31401, Toulouse, France

  2. Keith B. Rodgers

    Present address: AOS Program, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, 08544-0710, USA

  3. Ian J. Totterdell

    Present address: The Met Office, Hadley Centre, FitzRoy Road, Exeter, EX1 3PB, UK

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement, UMR CEA-CNRS, CEA Saclay, F-91191, Gif-sur-Yvette, France

    James C. Orr, Laurent Bopp, Patrick Monfray & Keith B. Rodgers

  2. Department of Biological Sciences, California State University San Marcos, California, 92096-0001, San Marcos, USA

    Victoria J. Fabry

  3. Laboratoire d'Océanographie et du Climat: Expérimentations et Approches Numériques (LOCEAN), Centre IRD de Bretagne, F-29280, Plouzané, France

    Olivier Aumont

  4. Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Massachusetts, 02543-1543, Woods Hole, USA

    Scott C. Doney

  5. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)/Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, Washington, 98115-6349, Seattle, USA

    Richard A. Feely & Christopher L. Sabine

  6. NOAA/Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, New Jersey, 08542, Princeton, USA

    Anand Gnanadesikan

  7. Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics, UCLA, California, 90095-4996, Los Angeles, USA

    Nicolas Gruber & Gian-Kasper Plattner

  8. Frontier Research Center for Global Change, 236-0001, Yokohama, Japan

    Akio Ishida & Yasuhiro Yamanaka

  9. Climate and Environmental Physics, Physics Institute, University of Bern, CH-3012, Bern, Switzerland

    Fortunat Joos & Gian-Kasper Plattner

  10. Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences (AOS) Program, Princeton University, New Jersey, 08544-0710, Princeton, USA

    Robert M. Key, Jorge L. Sarmiento & Richard D. Slater

  11. National Center for Atmospheric Research, Colorado, 80307-3000, Boulder, USA

    Keith Lindsay

  12. Max Planck Institut für Meteorologie, D-20146, Hamburg, Germany

    Ernst Maier-Reimer

  13. CSIRO Marine Research and Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems CRC, Tasmania, 7001, Hobart, Australia

    Richard Matear

  14. Astrophysics and Geophysics Institute, University of Liege, B-4000, Liege, Belgium

    Anne Mouchet

  15. Department of Meteorology, Pennsylvania State University, Pennsylvania, 16802-5013, University Park, USA

    Raymond G. Najjar

  16. LOCEAN, Université Pierre et Marie Curie, F-75252, Paris, France

    Keith B. Rodgers

  17. Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, D-27515, Bremerhaven, Germany

    Reiner Schlitzer & Marie-France Weirig

  18. National Oceanography Centre Southampton, SO14 3ZH, Southampton, UK

    Ian J. Totterdell & Andrew Yool

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  1. James C. Orr
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Correspondence to James C. Orr.

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Orr, J., Fabry, V., Aumont, O. et al. Anthropogenic ocean acidification over the twenty-first century and its impact on calcifying organisms. Nature 437, 681–686 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature04095

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