Description: © The Author(s), 2016. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Biogeosciences 13 (2016): 5065-5083, doi:10.5194/bg-13-5065-2016.

Description: One of the major challenges to assessing the impact of ocean acidification on marine life is detecting and interpreting long-term change in the context of natural variability. This study addresses this need through a global synthesis of monthly pH and aragonite saturation state (Ωarag) climatologies for 12 open ocean, coastal, and coral reef locations using 3-hourly moored observations of surface seawater partial pressure of CO2 and pH collected together since as early as 2010. Mooring observations suggest open ocean subtropical and subarctic sites experience present-day surface pH and Ωarag conditions outside the bounds of preindustrial variability throughout most, if not all, of the year. In general, coastal mooring sites experience more natural variability and thus, more overlap with preindustrial conditions; however, present-day Ωarag conditions surpass biologically relevant thresholds associated with ocean acidification impacts on Mytilus californianus (Ωarag 〈 1.8) and Crassostrea gigas (Ωarag 〈 2.0) larvae in the California Current Ecosystem (CCE) and Mya arenaria larvae in the Gulf of Maine (Ωarag 〈 1.6). At the most variable mooring locations in coastal systems of the CCE, subseasonal conditions approached Ωarag =  1. Global and regional models and data syntheses of ship-based observations tended to underestimate seasonal variability compared to mooring observations. Efforts such as this to characterize all patterns of pH and Ωarag variability and change at key locations are fundamental to assessing present-day biological impacts of ocean acidification, further improving experimental design to interrogate organism response under real-world conditions, and improving predictive models and vulnerability assessments seeking to quantify the broader impacts of ocean acidification.

Description: The CO2 and ocean acidification observations were funded by NOAA’s Climate Observation Division (COD) in the Climate Program Office and NOAA’s Ocean Acidification Program. The maintenance of the Stratus and WHOTS Ocean Reference Stations were also supported by NOAA COD (NA09OAR4320129). Additional support for buoy equipment, maintenance, and/or ancillary measurements was provided by NOAA through the US Integrated Ocean Observing System office: for the La Parguera buoy under a Cooperative Agreement (NA11NOS0120035) with the Caribbean Coastal Ocean Observing System, for the Chá b˘a buoy under a Cooperative Agreement (NA11NOS0120036) with the Northwest Association of Networked Ocean Observing System, for the Gray’s Reef buoy under a Cooperative Agreement (NA11NOS0120033) with the Southeast Coastal Ocean Observing Regional Association, and for the Gulf of Main buoy under a Cooperative Agreement (NA11NOS0120034) with the Northeastern Regional Association of Coastal and Ocean Observing Systems.

Description: Author Posting. © The Oceanography Society, 2015. This article is posted here by permission of The Oceanography Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Oceanography 28, no. 2 (2015): 92-107, doi:10.5670/oceanog.2015.34.

Description: Coastal ocean ecosystems have always served human populations—they provide food security, livelihoods, coastal protection, and defense. Ocean acidification is a global threat to these ecosystem services, particularly when other local and regional stressors combine with it to jeopardize coastal health. Monitoring efforts call for a coordinated global approach toward sustained, integrated coastal ocean health observing networks to address the region-specific mix of factors while also adhering to global ocean acidification observing network principles to facilitate comparison among regions for increased utility and understanding. Here, we generalize guidelines for scoping and designing regional coastal ocean acidification observing networks and provide examples of existing efforts. While challenging in the early stages of coordinating the design and prioritizing the implementation of these observing networks, it is essential to actively engage all of the relevant stakeholder groups from the outset, including private industries, public agencies, regulatory bodies, decision makers, and the general public. The long-term sustainability of these critical observing networks will rely on leveraging of resources and the strength of partnerships across the consortium of stakeholders and those implementing coastal ocean health observing networks

Description: National Science Foundation, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

Description: Author Posting. © The Oceanography Society, 2015. This article is posted here by permission of The Oceanography Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Oceanography 28, no. 2 (2015): 226-228, doi:10.5670/oceanog.2015.45.

Description: Ocean acidification (OA) refers to the general decrease in pH of the global ocean as a result of absorbing anthropogenic CO2 emitted in the atmosphere since preindustrial times (Sabine et al., 2004). There is, however, considerable variability in ocean acidification, and many careful measurements need to be made and compared in order to obtain scientifically valid information for the assessment of patterns, trends, and impacts over a range of spatial and temporal scales, and to understand the processes involved. A single country or institution cannot undertake measurements of worldwide coastal and open ocean OA changes; therefore, international cooperation is needed to achieve that goal. The OA data that have been, and are being, collected represent a significant public investment. To this end, it is critically important that researchers (and others) around the world are easily able to find and use reliable OA information that range from observing data (from time-series moorings, process studies, and research cruises), to biological response experiments (e.g., mesocosm), data products, and model output.

Description: © The Author(s), 2019. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Sutton, A. J., Feely, R. A., Maenner-Jones, S., Musielwicz, S., Osborne, J., Dietrich, C., Monacci, N., Cross, J., Bott, R., Kozyr, A., Andersson, A. J., Bates, N. R., Cai, W., Cronin, M. F., De Carlo, E. H., Hales, B., Howden, S. D., Lee, C. M., Manzello, D. P., McPhaden, M. J., Melendez, M., Mickett, J. B., Newton, J. A., Noakes, S. E., Noh, J. H., Olafsdottir, S. R., Salisbury, J. E., Send, U., Trull, T. W., Vandemark, D. C., & Weller, R. A. Autonomous seawater pCO(2) and pH time series from 40 surface buoys and the emergence of anthropogenic trends. Earth System Science Data, 11(1), (2019):421-439, doi:10.5194/essd-11-421-2019.

Description: Ship-based time series, some now approaching over 3 decades long, are critical climate records that have dramatically improved our ability to characterize natural and anthropogenic drivers of ocean carbon dioxide (CO2) uptake and biogeochemical processes. Advancements in autonomous marine carbon sensors and technologies over the last 2 decades have led to the expansion of observations at fixed time series sites, thereby improving the capability of characterizing sub-seasonal variability in the ocean. Here, we present a data product of 40 individual autonomous moored surface ocean pCO2 (partial pressure of CO2) time series established between 2004 and 2013, 17 also include autonomous pH measurements. These time series characterize a wide range of surface ocean carbonate conditions in different oceanic (17 sites), coastal (13 sites), and coral reef (10 sites) regimes. A time of trend emergence (ToE) methodology applied to the time series that exhibit well-constrained daily to interannual variability and an estimate of decadal variability indicates that the length of sustained observations necessary to detect statistically significant anthropogenic trends varies by marine environment. The ToE estimates for seawater pCO2 and pH range from 8 to 15 years at the open ocean sites, 16 to 41 years at the coastal sites, and 9 to 22 years at the coral reef sites. Only two open ocean pCO2 time series, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Hawaii Ocean Time-series Station (WHOTS) in the subtropical North Pacific and Stratus in the South Pacific gyre, have been deployed longer than the estimated trend detection time and, for these, deseasoned monthly means show estimated anthropogenic trends of 1.9±0.3 and 1.6±0.3 µatm yr−1, respectively. In the future, it is possible that updates to this product will allow for the estimation of anthropogenic trends at more sites; however, the product currently provides a valuable tool in an accessible format for evaluating climatology and natural variability of surface ocean carbonate chemistry in a variety of regions. Data are available at https://doi.org/10.7289/V5DB8043 and https://www.nodc.noaa.gov/ocads/oceans/Moorings/ndp097.html (Sutton et al., 2018).

Description: We gratefully acknowledge the major funders of the pCO2 and pH observations: the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, US Department of Commerce, including resources from the Ocean Observing and Monitoring Division of the Climate Program Office (fund reference number 100007298) and the Ocean Acidification Program. We rely on a long list of scientific partners and technical staff who carry out buoy maintenance, sensor deployment, and ancillary measurements at sea. We thank these partners and their funders for their continued efforts in sustaining the platforms that support these long-term pCO2 and pH observations, including the following institutions: the Australian Integrated Marine Observing System, the Caribbean Coastal Ocean Observing System, Gray's Reef National Marine Sanctuary, the Marine and Freshwater Research Institute, the Murdock Charitable Trust, the National Data Buoy Center, the National Science Foundation Division of Ocean Sciences, NOAA–Korean Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries Joint Project Agreement, the Northwest Association of Networked Ocean Observing Systems, the Research Moored Array for African-Asian-Australian Monsoon Analysis and Prediction (i.e., RAMA), the University of Washington, the US Integrated Ocean Observing System, and the Washington Ocean Acidification Center. The open ocean sites are part of the OceanSITES program of the Global Ocean Observing System and the Surface Ocean CO2 Observing Network. All sites are also part of the Global Ocean Acidification Observing Network. This paper is PMEL contribution number 4797.

Description: Estuaries are recognized as one of the habitats most vulnerable to coastal ocean acidification due to seasonal extremes and prolonged duration of acidified conditions. This is combined with co-occurring environmental stressors such as increased temperature and low dissolved oxygen. Despite this, evidence of biological impacts of ocean acidification in estuarine habitats is largely lacking. By combining physical, biogeochemical, and biological time-series observations over relevant seasonal-to-interannual time scales, this study is the first to describe both the spatial and temporal variation of biological response in the pteropod Limacina helicina to estuarine acidification in association with other stressors. Using clustering and principal component analyses, sampling sites were grouped according to their distribution of physical and biogeochemical variables over space and time. This identified the most exposed habitats and time intervals corresponding to the most severe negative biological impacts across three seasons and three years. We developed a cumulative stress index as a means of integrating spatial-temporal OA variation over the organismal life history. Our findings show that over the 2014–2016 study period, the severity of low aragonite saturation state combined with the duration of exposure contributed to overall cumulative stress and resulted in severe shell dissolution. Seasonally-variable estuaries such as the Salish Sea (Washington, U.S.A.) predispose sensitive organisms to more severe acidified conditions than those of coastal and open-ocean habitats, yet the sensitive organisms persist. We suggest potential environmental factors and compensatory mechanisms that allow pelagic calcifiers to inhabit less favorable habitats and partially offset associated stressors, for instance through food supply, increased temperature, and adaptation of their life history. The novel metric of cumulative stress developed here can be applied to other estuarine environments with similar physical and chemical dynamics, providing a new tool for monitoring biological response in estuaries under pressure from accelerating global change.