Acidification Analysis of Black Sea

Abstract

Increasing anthropogenic CO2 concentration in the troposphere results in ocean acidification. Albeit, food web in the ocean, marine animals and calcifying bioata are affected negatively. Some marine species might have the possibility of extinction and some may have evolve eventually due to ocean acidification. In this study, the acidification of Black Sea is analyzed based on the pH observations made between 1990 and 2014. Sea surface pH value is found to be decreased by 0,07 and increased by 0,104 between 1990-2004 and 2005-2014 respectively. The pH annual variations also compared analytically to the annual averages of air temperature and CO2 emissions of Turkey. Both the air temperature and CO2 emission are increasing either in 1990-2004 or 2005-2014, while the rate of increase in 2005-2014 is greater than in 1990-2004. The decreasing pH (which means acidification) in 1990-2004 is found to be the reason of this difference, because some CO2 is considered to be emitted by Black Sea. In terms of climate change, it shows that this acidification is a little bit slowing down the temperature increase over the Black Sea region while CO2 and air temperature increasing rate more between 2005-2014 where there is no acidification in the Black Sea.