Coral reefs may start dissolving when atmospheric CO2 doubles

March 9, 2009 |







“Our fossil-fueled lifestyle is killing off coral reefs,” says Caldeira. “If we don’t change our ways soon, in the next few decades we will destroy what took millions of years to create.”


2 Responses to Coral reefs may start dissolving when atmospheric CO2 doubles

  1. Mike42 March 14, 2010 at 12:24 pm #


    As the article states the researchers “used field data from coral reefs to determine the effects of temperature and water chemistry on coral calcification rates”. Here is a link to the research paper: {I can’t include links. Use Google.]

    Citation: J. Silverman, B. Lazar, L. Cao, K. Caldeira, and J. Erez (2009), Coral reefs may start dissolving when atmospheric CO doubles, Geophys. Res. Lett., 36, L05606, doi:10.1029/2008GL036282.

    I don’t not know about the changes in coral reefs in past ages, but I did fibd an article that explains that if the rate of change in atmospheric CO2 is slow, then ocean pH does not change much because of buffering effects.

    “When a CO2 change occurs over a short time interval (that is, less than about 10^4 yr), ocean pH is relatively sensitive to added CO2. However,
    when a CO2 change occurs over a long time interval (longer than about 10^5 yr), ocean chemistry is buffered by interactions with carbonate minerals, thereby reducing sensitivity to pH changes.”

    See: [I can’t include the URL. Use Google} Nature 425, 365 (25 September 2003) | doi:10.1038/425365a. Oceanography: Anthropogenic carbon and ocean pH by Ken Caldeira1 & Michael E. Wickett2

    Note: you may need a subscribtioon to view these articles. If so, go to a near by university library a look them up there.

  2. Anonymous March 10, 2009 at 8:31 am #

    In Gore’s presentation, the carbon dioxide levels were several times those of the present era for millions of years at a time. Why did not the coral reefs dissolve during those periods?

    Are there coral species whose coral does not readily dissolve ? Are there coral species that react to increased CO2 levels by increasing their production of calcium ?

    Did the research team conduct any lab work to verify their computer models. E.G. Did they take real coral and drop it into vats of sea water with varying amounts of CO2 to determine how long they took to dissolve.

    I work with computer models in a different discipline. The greatest problem is engineers and researchers who do not bother to validate their models against real world data prior to releasing the results. There are too many confounding variables in the environment of coral reefs to make these statements without doing significant lab work with sizable chunks of living coral reef and its denizens. Recall that the coral reefs have successfully made it thru several extended periods of high atmospheric CO2 levels radically higher then any currently anticipated under the worst scenarios. How did the coral do this and what makes this period different. Unless the modelers can answer this question with real world lab data demonstrating that this period is chemically different or that modern coral responds differently today then ancient coral did during the previous high CO2 periods, the validity of their math models must remain suspect.

    Remember with computer models, the sequence is do the theory, make the model, validate the model against one set of real world data, throw the model out and redo it so that it validates against the real world data, run the model again, calibrate against a second set of real world data.

    The key is the extensive real world experiments to gather validation and calibration data which were not mentioned in the article.

    Thank you,
    David Gibson, MSCE, PE

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