Diverging seasonal extremes for ocean acidification during the twenty-first century

• Published in: Nature Climate Change
• Main Authors: Kwiatkowski, Lester, Orr, James C.
• Other Authors: Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement Gif-sur-Yvette (LSCE), Institut national des sciences de l'Univers (INSU - CNRS)-Université Paris-Saclay-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives (CEA)-Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (UVSQ), Modelling the Earth Response to Multiple Anthropogenic Interactions and Dynamics (MERMAID), Institut national des sciences de l'Univers (INSU - CNRS)-Université Paris-Saclay-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives (CEA)-Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (UVSQ)-Institut national des sciences de l'Univers (INSU - CNRS)-Université Paris-Saclay-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives (CEA)-Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (UVSQ), ANR-10-LABX-0018,L-IPSL,LabEx Institut Pierre Simon Laplace (IPSL): Understand climate and anticipate future changes(2010), European Project: 312979,EC:FP7:INFRA,FP7-INFRASTRUCTURES-2012-1,IS-ENES2(2013), European Project: 610028,EC:FP7:ERC,ERC-2013-SyG,IMBALANCE-P(2014), European Project: 641816,H2020,H2020-SC5-2014-two-stage,CRESCENDO(2015)
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: HAL CCSD 2018
• Subjects: envir; geo; Ocean acidification
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-017-0054-0; https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02044904/file/Kwiatkowski_Orr_2017_OA.pdf; https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02044904

International audience How ocean acidification will affect marine organisms depends on changes in both the long-term mean and the short-term temporal variability of carbonate chemistry. Although the decadal-to-centennial response to atmospheric CO$_2$ and climate change is constrained by observations and models, little is known about corresponding changes in seasonality, particularly for pH. Here we assess the latter by analysing nine earth system models (ESMs) forced with a business-as-usual emissions scenario. During the twenty-first century, the seasonal cycle of surface-ocean pH was attenuated by 16 $\pm$ 7%, on average, whereas that for hydrogen ion concentration [H$^+$ ] was amplified by 81 $\pm$ 16%. Simultaneously, the seasonal amplitude of the aragonite saturation state ($\Omega _{arag}$) was attenuated except in the subtropics, where it was amplified. These contrasting changes derive from regionally varying sensitivities of these variables to atmospheric CO$_2$ and climate change and to diverging trends in seasonal extremes in the primary controlling variables (temperature, dissolved inorganic carbon and alkalinity). Projected seasonality changes will tend to exacerbate the impacts of increasing [H$^+$ ] on marine organisms during the summer and ameliorate the impacts during the winter, although the opposite holds in the high latitudes. Similarly, over most of the ocean, impacts from declining $\Omega _{arag}$ are likely to be intensified during the summer and dampened during the winter.