Forecast of Sea Surface Acidification in the Northwestern Mediterranean Sea

Abstract EN

Observation data from DYFAMED site, in northwestern Mediterranean Sea between 1995 and 2011, are used to study mathematical forecasts of sea water surface pH evolution over the next century.

In a preliminary study, daily and monthly data have been used to compute total inorganic carbon (CT) and total alkalinity (AT) concentrations.

Due to the arbitrary number of missing monthly observations from 1995 to 2011, mean pH values have been calculated from the available data in order to obtain a convenient monthly time series.

Based on these results, we used in this paper a cubic spline method for interpolation within the range of known time series and then tested two extrapolation methods: linear and exponential smoothing.

A 100-year simulated period is performed in order to have information beyond seasonal variations and observations.

The mean seasonal variation allows us to draw forecast evolutions from 0.3 to 0.4 pH units decrease in the water surface at the end of the century.

Although these simple forecasts do not pretend to present realistic predictions, these obtained theoretical results provide limits on pH variations in the northwestern Mediterranean Sea similar to those in the open ocean.