Frequently asked questions about ocean acidification

Abstract

Over the past five years, no other issue has received more attention in the marine science community than ocean acidification. Ocean acidification is a multi-disciplinary research area that encompasses topics such as chemistry, paleontology, biology, ecology, biogeochemistry, modeling, social sciences and economics. With this complexity and the continued development of our understanding in mind, the U.S. Ocean Carbon and Biogeochemistry (OCB; www.us-ocb.org) program, with support from the UK Ocean Acidification Research Programme (UKOA; http://www.oceanacidification.org.uk/), has updated and expanded a list of frequently asked questions (FAQs) that were developed in 2010 by OCB, the European Project on Ocean Acidification (EPOCA), and UKOA. Equipped with the most up-to-date information, the global ocean acidification research community has drafted concise, understandable summaries of the current knowledge. The responses were carefully vetted during an open peer-review and revision process to ensure readability without any loss of scientific accuracy. This effort was international in scale, with 63 scientists from 47 institutions and 12 countries contributing to the process.