[Coral-List] HadISST 1.1 data: Bleaching is not due to Warming

[TDWYATT at aol.com]

In a message dated 06/02/2004 2:10:47 PM Eastern Daylight Time, 
pnicoll at smhall.org writes:

> I am by no means qualified to get too in depth in this strand, but could 
> not the SST anomalies indicate higher ability to dissolve CO2 and therefore 
> indicate potential bleaching due to this theory?

Patti, Are you saying that the higher SST allows for a greater dissolution of 
CO2 from the atmosphere?  For most gasses (including CO2), solubility 
decreases as temp increases.  Am I missing your point?  It seems that the saturation 
state for the calcium salts of carbonic acid improve as temp drops, not as it 
increases, leading to a net effect of decreasing overall carbonic acids salts  
and intermediat species, rather than an increase.  Although as atmospheric 
CO2 increases, there should be a corresponding increase in the ratios of pCO2 to 
other gasses. the effect would be to decrease the ability to biotically 
precipitate CaCO3 at the calcioblastic endothelium (lower pH = higher 
supersaturation state for CaCO3),  I do not know if corals have the ability to control pH 
at that location, I would think that pH would be dependant on diffusion of 
seawater, not aware of the presence of any proton pumps short of the activity of 
calcification itself, and I am not aware that calcification is capable of 
correcting for lower pH (higher pCO2) in the microenvironment at the sites of 
calcification.  Might check TA MacConnaughay's "Calcification Generates Protons" 
paper circa 1997 in Earth Science Reviews and its references.

Just curious, TDWyatt