Ocean Acidification Network

A consortium of institutions and organizations from Monterey, California has successfully bid to host the third symposium on The Ocean in a High-CO2 World in autumn 2012. The symposium aims to attract more than 300 of the world’s leading scientists to discuss the impacts of ocean acidification on marine organisms, ecosystems, and biogeochemical cycles. It will also cover socio-economic consequences of ocean acidification, including policy and management implications.

The symposium is sponsored by the Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research (SCOR), Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) of UNESCO, and International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP), which selected the Monterey consortium from eight bids to host the meeting. The international Planning Committee is led by Prof. Dr. Ulf Riebesell of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences (Germany), and the local organization is led by Dr. Jim Barry of Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute and supported by a consortium of institutions.

The symposium is the third in a series and will build on the successes of the Paris and Monaco symposia in 2004 and 2008, respectively. The Paris meeting was seminal in identifying the magnitude of ocean acidification for marine ecosystems and the outcomes of the Monaco symposium, focusing on the advances in knowledge of the affects on marine organisms, also made an impact on a broader audience through a Summary for Policymakers and the Monaco Declaration.

The international planning committee will meet in December 2010 to develop the scientific program for the symposium. Please contact Ed Urban (Ed.Urban@scor-int.org) if you would like to provide ideas for symposium topics. Inputs will be collated and provided to the planning committee.

International Planning Committee
Ulf Riebesell, Chair, Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences (IFM-GEOMAR), Germany,(uriebesell@ifm-geomar.de)
Claire Armstrong, Univ. of Tromsø, Norway
Peter Brewer, Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, USA
Ken Denman, Fisheries and Oceans
Canada
Richard Feely, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, USA
Kunshan Gao, Xiamen Univ., China
Jean-Pierre Gattuso, Observatoire Océanologique Laboratoire d'Océanographie, France
Dan Laffoley, Natural England and the International Union for Conservation of Nature, UK
Yukihiro Nojiri, National Institute for Environmental Studies, Japan
James Orr, Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et l'Environnement, France
Hans-Otto Poertner, Alfred Wegener Institute, Germany
Carlos Eduardo Rezende, Universidade Estadual do Norte Fluminense, Brazil
Daniela Schmidt, Univ. of Bristol, UK
Anya Waite, Univ. of Western Australia

Sponsor Representatives
Wendy Broadgate, International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (wendy@igbp.kva.se)
Kathy Tedesco, Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO (k.tedesco@unesco.org)
Ed Urban, Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research (Ed.Urban@scor-int.org)

Ocean Acidification Summary for Policymakers 2009
Downloads:
English: low resolution (1.4 MB) | high resolution (7 MB)
French: low resolution (1.4 MB)
Spanish: low resolution (1.4 MB)
Print copies may be obtained by sending an email to: comms@igbp.kva.se

About Ocean Acidification
The ocean absorbs approximately one-fourth of the CO2 added to the atmosphere from human activities each year, greatly reducing the impact of this greenhouse gas on climate. When CO2 dissolves in seawater, carbonic acid is formed. This phenomenon, called ocean acidification, is decreasing the ability of many marine organisms to build their shells and skeletal structure. Field studies suggest that impacts of acidification on some major marine calcifiers may already be detectable, and naturally high-CO2 marine environments exhibit major shifts in marine ecosystems following trends expected from laboratory experiments. Yet the full impact of ocean acidification and how these impacts may propogate through marine ecosystems and affect fisheries remains largely unknown.

About the Symposia
In May 2004, the Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research (SCOR) and the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO (UNESCO-IOC) co-hosted an international symposium, “The Ocean in a High-CO2 World”, to evaluate what is known about these issues. This symposium brought together 120 of the world’s leading scientists from 18 countries with expertise from different branches of marine biology, chemistry and physics to piece together what is known about the impacts of ocean acidification on marine ecosystems, and to identify urgent research priorities to understand the mechanisms, magnitude and time scale of these impacts.

Following this symposium, several national and international organizations requested SCOR and the IOC to keep this issue under review, and the governing bodies of SCOR and the IOC agreed to make this symposium a regular event to be held every 4 years.

The 2nd symposium on “The Ocean in a High-CO2 World” was held on 6-9 October 2008 at the Oceanography Museum of Monaco under the High Patronage of His Serene Highness Prince Albert II. The meeting brought together 220 scientists from 32 countries to assess what is known about ocean acidification impacts on marine chemistry and ecosystems. The symposium was sponsored by SCOR, IOC-UNESCO, the International Atomic Energy Agency’s Marine Environmental Laboratory and the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme, and supported by the Prince Albert II Foundation, the Centre Scientifique de Monaco, the U.S. National Science Foundation, the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea, and the North Pacific Marine Science Organization.