pH-density relationships in seawater

Abstract

In surface waters from the Southern Ocean and from the west coast of Baja California, a relationship was found between pH and water column density. In the Southern Ocean, pH was found to correlate well with density and salinity but not with temperature because water column stability was due to salinity. The opposite was found on the west coast of Baja California, where density was controlled by temperature. This demonstrates that pH follows density independently of what controls it. According to the results of this work, we suggest that pH-density correlations may be an important option in the development of algorithms for monitoring CO2 from satellite imagery.

Keywords

• pH-density
• pH-salinity
• pH-temperature
• satellite imagery
• pCO2