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Influence of terrestrial weathering on ocean acidification and the next glacial inception
Author(s) -
Uchikawa Joji,
Zeebe Richard E.
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1029/2008gl035963
Subject(s) - weathering , ocean acidification , environmental science , seawater , soil production function , earth science , glacial period , atmospheric sciences , oceanography , geology , soil science , geochemistry , soil water , geomorphology , pedogenesis
Ocean uptake of anthropogenic CO 2 causes a decline in seawater pH, a process known as ocean acidification, which may adversely affect marine organisms. We investigate whether continental weathering can mitigate future ocean acidification by sequestering atmospheric CO 2 . We conducted simulations under a suite of carbon emission scenarios with different weathering parameterizations. The short‐term impact of a strong weathering feedback was only notable for large emissions with slow injection. This mitigation by enhanced weathering, however, is an order of magnitude smaller than the expected maximum pH decline based on the default parameterizations. Thus on short timescales, weathering has little effect on future atmospheric CO 2 and ocean acidification, regardless of the assumed weathering feedback strength. But on longer timescales and for large emissions, different weathering parameterizations introduce large uncertainties regarding the time when p CO 2 will return to climatically relevant levels of, say, 400 μ atm in the future.