Atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration has been steadily increasing since the onset of the Industrial Revolution. The world's oceans absorb one third of anthropogenic carbon emissions. This aqueous CO2 reacts with seawater to produce carbonic acid, which ionizes to reduce ocean pH. This process, known as ocean acidification, has far-reaching consequences for marine ecosystems, including depressed metabolic and immune responses of marine organisms and dissolution of the exoskeletons of calcareous organisms. Improved pH monitoring across space and time is vital for forecasting and mitigating the effects of ocean acidification, especially in coastal ecosystems. However, in situ monitoring of sea surface pH is inadequate for understanding the impacts of ocean acidification, especially in coastal waters, which exhibit a high degree of spatial and temporal heterogeneity. To address this problem, a regional algorithm was developed to determine surface pH in Monterey Bay. The algorithm correlates ocean pH with easily remotely sensed and/or modeled oceanographic parameters (e.g. sea surface temperature, sea surface salinity, chlorophyll a concentration, and wind speed) across Monterey Bay's three oceanographic "seasons": The Davidson Current season (December to February), the upwelling season (March -August), and the oceanic season (September to November). Statistically significant relationships between pH and a subset of the aforementioned parameters were found across all three seasons. Furthermore, modeled pH did not differ significantly from in situ pH measurements, meaning that this algorithm can be used to remotely sense pH in Monterey Bay.

Presentation Slides: https://www.scribd.com/document/320956114/Mapping-Ocean-Acidification-in-Monterey-Bay#fullscreen&from_embed