Ice melting and acidification in the Arctic: Rejoinder to the history of colonial stewardship of Lower Tanana Dena and Greenland

The oceanographer says that the icy waters are special for a number of reasons. One of the reasons is that the ice is melting. It keeps gasses out of the ocean and the atmosphere by acting as a lid on the water. When it’s gone, the water sucks up the extra CO2 in the air above it. Plus, that meltwater dilutes compounds that could neutralize the acid. It usually sits there, not mixing much with the deeper water below. A pool of water near the surface is extra acidic because of that. According to a recent report published in the journal Science, research shows that acidification is occurring at three to four times the rate of other ocean basins. We were sure that acidification would be fast. Cai says they didn’t know how fast. The culprit, they surmise, is the rapid decrease in the range of summer ice over those years. The end-of-summer ice decreased on average by 13 percent per decade between 1979 and 2021.

The International Arctic Research Center is in the unceded homeland of the Lower Tanana Dena and the same is true for the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources. The authors recognize the historical and ongoing legacies of colonialism and are especially grateful to all Indigenous communities of the Arctic for their stewardship of these lands, waters and species, for now and time immemorial.

Acidification of the ocean due to the hydrophobic CO2 molecule: recipe for a caustic solution of the Earth’s atmosphere

The molecule that causes so much CO2 to end up in the ocean is very hydrophobic. It likes to react with water much more than other gasses. The hydrogen ion is given up as a result of the first product of the reaction, carbonic acid. That’s a recipe for a caustic solution. The more hydrogen ions a solution has, the more acidic it is, which is why as the CO2 in Earth’s atmosphere has increased, its water has gotten more acidic too. The ocean will reach a level of acidity not seen in millions of years by the end of the century, according to models. Prior periods of acidification and warming have been linked with mass die-offs of some aquatic species, and caused others to go extinct. Scientists believe this round of acidification is happening much faster.