Greenhouse Gases Strike Again

Science Daily reports today:

The ocean has helped slow global warming by absorbing much of the excess heat and heat-trapping carbon dioxide that has been going into the atmosphere since the start of the Industrial Revolution.

All that extra carbon dioxide, however, has been a bitter pill for the ocean to swallow. It's changing the chemistry of seawater, making it more acidic and otherwise inhospitable, threatening many important marine organisms.

Scientists call ocean acidification "the other carbon dioxide problem." They warn that because it causes such fundamental changes in the ocean, it could impact millions of people who depend on the ocean for food and resources. "The growing amount of carbon dioxide in the ocean could have a bigger effect on life on Earth than carbon dioxide in the atmosphere," says JPL's Charles Miller, deputy principal investigator for NASA's new Orbiting Carbon Observatory, scheduled to launch next January.

Can we finally agree that CO2 is a pollutant?

The really big question is how much longer the ocean can continue to be a sink for atmospheric carbon dioxide before becoming saturated -- a process that may already be under way. The implications for our future climate -- and the ocean -- are immense.