Waters along North America’s Pacific coast are becoming more acidic, posing a threat to marine life, federal scientists reported Friday - adding that while that fits global warming scenarios, no one had expected the acidification to happen so soon. ‘We did not expect to see this extent of ocean acidification until the middle to the end of the century,’ said study co-author Chris Sabine. ‘Our results show for the first time that a large section of the North American continental shelf is impacted by ocean acidification,’ the experts wrote in the study published in the peer-reviewed journal Science. Acidification describes the process, natural or manmade, of ocean water becoming corrosive as a result of carbon dioxide being absorbed from the atmosphere. The researchers said anthropogenic, or manmade, emissions of carbon dioxide are likely to blame since the acidified water that is being ‘upwelled’ seasonally from the deeper ocean is from the last 50 years, a period when the burning of fossil fuels raised CO2 levels dramatically. ‘Other continental shelf regions may also be impacted where anthropogenic CO2-enriched water is being upwelled onto the shelf,’ they concluded. Threat ‘right now’ ‘Ocean acidification may be […]