Around a quarter of the CO2 from fossil fuels and cement production is absorbed by the oceans , which translates into an increase in acidification, or a decrease in PH , one of the main enemies of marine life.
The problem to know to what extent this degradation of ocean waters is accentuating is that scientific ships have difficulty accessing certain places such as the Arctic.
As explained in an article that will appear this Tuesday in the journal Environmental Science and Technology , scientists from the University of Exeter, the Plymouth Laboratory, the French Research Institute for the Exploitation of the Sea (Ifremer), the European Space Agency (ESA ) and an international group of collaborators are solving the impediment with satellite technology , which carry thermal cameras to measure temperature and microwave sensors to evaluate salinity, the two parameters that determine acidification levels.
Among the satellites enrolled in the mission are ESA’s Soil Moisture Ocean Salinity (SMOS) and NASA’s Aquarius, launched in 2011. Precisely, a recent investigation by the Australian National University and the University of Southampton suggested that C02 released into the atmosphere naturally ended the last ice age, between 19,000 and 10,000 years ago.
According to scientists, when the levels of C02 in the ocean exceeded those in the atmosphere, the ice disappeared and the sea level rose. Today, these experts warn, this disproportion is 60 to 1.
“We found a link: When the glaciers of the last ice age melted, the surface waters of the Southern Ocean and the Eastern Equatorial Pacific were also more acidic. This determined a level of CO2 concentration much higher than that of the atmosphere ”, explained the authors of the research. A warning for boaters .
Photo: Ifremer / ESA / CNES
