CO2 Threats to World´s Oceans Rising, Scientists Warn

In Monaco, scientists at the IAEA Marine Environment Laboratories (IAEA-MEL) have joined more than 150 experts from 26 countries calling for urgent actions to halt rising levels of acidity in the world´s oceans. Marine scientists warn that coral reefs are in danger from climate changes and ocean acidification. Most ocean regions could become inhospitable to coral reefs by 2050 if atmospheric CO2 levels continue to increase.

The leading scientists joined to back the Monaco Declaration on Ocean Acidification, directed at government leaders worldwide. The Declaration emphasizes that levels of acidity in oceans are accelerating and that the negative socio-economic impacts can only be limited by cutting back on the amounts of greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere.

The ocean absorbs CO2 from the atmosphere at a rate of more than 20 million tons per day, thus removing one-fourth of the anthropogenic CO2 emitted to the atmosphere each year and reducing the climate-change impacts of this greenhouse gas. However, when CO2 dissolves in seawater, it forms carbonic acid. As this "ocean acidification" continues, it decreases both ocean pH and the concentration of carbonate ion, the basic building block of the shells and skeletons of many marine organisms. Surface ocean pH has already dropped by 0.1 units since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.

It could lead to substantial changes in commercial fish stocks, threatening food security for millions of people as well as the multi-billion dollar fishing industry. The issue looks graver in comparison to the climate change.