More acid oceans are noisier, with unknown consequences for marine life

National Geographic: As the world's oceans become more acidic, the underwater sounds that whales and other marine mammals depend on for survival may turn into a confusing racket, a new study says. That's because the ocean's ability to conduct sound is expected to increase dramatically due to global warming. The shift could make it easier for rare whales to find each other and reproduce, researchers say.

More likely, though, the effect would be comparable to a person in a crowded place straining to talk over all the chatter. "What that means is that the background level of noise in the ocean—say wave noise or ship noise—will increase," said study co-author Peter Brewer, a geochemist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in California. …

Sound transmission in oceans is affected by the concentration of various ions, or charged atoms, said Keith Hester, a member of the research team. The ions are affected by the water's pH, which becomes more acidic as carbon dioxide from fossil fuel burning is absorbed. The result is carbonic acid….Ocean acidity, Hester said, is projected to increase by .3 pH points between now and 2050. That may not seem like much, but the change will spur a 70 percent increase in the distance sound will travel. "We were surprised to see how big it was," Hester said.

…”The effects on biology are uncertain at the moment," Richard Zeebe of the University of Hawaii said in an email. But it's clear that the change in sound transmission is an unanticipated side effect of fossil fuel burning, experts say…..

Water splash, shot by Nino barbieri, Wikimedia Commons, under Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License