UK Ocean Acidification Research Programme

The Ocean Acidification Research Programme is a 5-year collaborative programme with a budget of £12m funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) and the Department of Energy & Climate Change (DECC).

The overall aim of the Research Programme is to provide a greater understanding of the implications of ocean acidification and its risks to ocean biogeochemistry, biodiversity and the whole Earth System. The programme will also provide effective policy advice and make a significant contribution to the Living With Environmental Change programme.

Atmospheric CO₂ concentrations are increasing as a result of human activity and are likely to continue to do so in the future, although the future levels of CO₂ are uncertain. In response to this rise, the oceans are taking up more CO₂ and becoming more acidic. The associated increases in ocean acidity over coming decades are likely to be at a rate and on a scale that is unprecedented in at least the last 20 million years. It is likely that large areas of the ocean could become under-saturated with respect to at least aragonite (one of two common polymorphs of biologically produced calcium carbonate) within this century. Under such conditions, organisms creating aragonite skeletons face serious challenges.

This acidification will clearly have major impacts on ocean biogeochemistry and biodiversity, but impacts will extend beyond this to the whole Earth System via impacts on air-sea gas exchange and sedimentation of material through the oceans. The scale and nature of the effects of acidification on marine systems and more widely are very poorly known. It is proposed that this Research Programme will run for five-years.

Research Programme activities will be focussed on the North-East Atlantic (including European shelf and slope), Antarctic and Arctic Oceans, and will include the effects of acidification on biochemistry and biodiversity, past responses to acidification, ecosystem structure and function, habitats and species, and socio-economic implications.  

More information:

http://www.nerc.ac.uk/research/programmes/oceanacidification