Change in Global Sea Surface Acidity

Image from Wikimedia Commons

Description: Estimated change in sea surface pH from the pre-industrial period (1700s) to the present day (1990s). ? pH here is in standard pH units. This change is caused by the invasion of anthropogenic CO₂ (see Ocean acidification). Calculated using Richard Zeebe's csys package with data from the Global Ocean Data Analysis Project^[1][2] and World Ocean Atlas^[3] climatologies. ? pH is plotted here using a Mollweide projection (using MATLAB and the M_Map package).

Note that the GLODAP climatology is missing data in certain oceanic provinces including the Arctic Ocean, the Caribbean Sea, the Mediterranean Sea and the Malay Archipelago.

Image originally created by Plumbago and uploaded at en:Wikipedia on 13 February 2007.

References

1. ^ Gruber, N., Sarmiento, J.L. and Stocker, T.F. (1996). An improved method for detecting anthropogenic CO₂ in the oceans, Global Biogeochemical Cycles 10:809–837
2. ^ Using estimated pre-industrial (1700s) and measured present day (1990s) fields of DIC
3. ^
   In the absence of estimated pre-industrial (1700s) fields of
   temperature and salinity, present day (1990s) fields were used
   (although these contain a small signal from global warming)