lysocline

The lysocline is a physical observation of dissolution “intensity” that is correlated with the carbonate ion concentration and CaCO3 saturation state in seawater.

HAnsen and Schmidt: Predicting the Past – Continued « Climate Audit 2006

Yes, you can simulate a lysocline in an aquarium, as you point out … but the simulation will not work as a buffering system, like the real lysocline.

HAnsen and Schmidt: Predicting the Past – Continued « Climate Audit 2006

Jack, you are correct that I missed a couple of your references, and that I simplified the description of the lysocline … however, no aquarium has one that I know of.

HAnsen and Schmidt: Predicting the Past – Continued « Climate Audit 2006

There may actually be a small pressure-related effect at extreme depths well below the saturation horizons and lysocline, but this is secondary.

HAnsen and Schmidt: Predicting the Past – Continued « Climate Audit 2006

They lysocline is not the same as the CaCO3 saturation horizons there are usually two referred to, because the two polymorphs of CaCO3, calcite and aragonite, have different solubilities in seawater.

HAnsen and Schmidt: Predicting the Past – Continued « Climate Audit 2006

An aquarium is not the ocean, for a host of reasons including the lack of a lysocline in any aquarium that I know of.

HAnsen and Schmidt: Predicting the Past – Continued « Climate Audit 2006

I can discuss the lysocline, and the effect of weak acids on buffered solutions, and a host of other issues that bear on the subject at hand.

Hansen and Schmidt: Predicting the Past? « Climate Audit 2006

However, to get the CaCO3 to dissolve requires a pressure of many thousands of tonnes per square metre … so a lysocline not present, of course, in any aquarium that I know of.

HAnsen and Schmidt: Predicting the Past – Continued « Climate Audit 2006

As I said before, when you have an aquarium which has a lysocline, then the results might be applicable to the real world.

Hansen and Schmidt: Predicting the Past? « Climate Audit 2006

Among the many buffering effects present in the CO2 chemistry of the ocean is the changing depth of the lysocline.

HAnsen and Schmidt: Predicting the Past – Continued « Climate Audit 2006