Such past events, due to natural causes happened about ten times more slowly, and the recovery in ocean chemistry took around 100,000 years.
“The threat of ocean acidification is serious,” said Se-Jong Ju of the Korea Institute of Ocean Science and Technology (KIOST), “and this is why we launched monitoring platforms off the coast of Korea to assess exactly how quickly changes are occurring and their impact on our coastal ecosystems.”
“At the end of the day, the only way to deal with ocean acidification is to reduce CO2 emissions,” says Prof. Murray Roberts, co-editor of the report and Director of Heriot-Watt University’s Centre for Marine Biodiversity & Biotechnology. “But for this to happen, people first need to be aware that ocean acidification is an important issue, and having it high on the CBD agenda is a huge step forward.”
The CBD report was subject to extensive peer review, with a near-final draft scrutinised by the 18th meeting of the CBD’s Subsidiary Body on Scientific, Technical and Technological Advice at Montreal in June. That body recommended that the report should be brought to wider attention, including referral to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), on account of the very close linkage between the future severity of ocean acidification and the global success (or failure) in reducing CO2 emissions.
Check the following link to read/download the Full Report:
http://www.cbd.int/doc/publications/cbd-ts-75-en.pdf
Source: UNEP.
