The geologic history of seawater pH
Abstract
The long view of ocean pH: The acid-base balance of the oceans has been critical in maintaining Earth's habitability and allowing the emergence of early life. Despite this importance, systematic estimates of historical seawater pH are lacking. Halevy and Bachan developed a model of seawater chemistry and pH over time scales exceeding ∼100 million years. Their highly robust probabilistic history of seawater pH and chemistry reflects evolving properties of Earth's atmosphere, oceans, and crust. Seawater pH increased from early Archean values of ∼6.5 to 7.0 to more recent values of ∼7.5 to 9.0 mostly as a result of solar brightening and decreasing interaction between seawater and oceanic crust. Science , this issue p. 1069
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Early in Earth's history, a much higher pCO2 atmosphere may have resulted in considerably more acidic surface waters.
“one reasonable possibility is that early in Earth’s history, there was a much higher pCO2 atmosphere which would have resulted in considerably more acidic surface waters [90].”
From Polyesters as a Model System for Building Primitive Biologies from Non-Biological Prebiotic Chemistry (2020) · cites this paper as [90]
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- Authors
- Halevy, I., & Bachan, A.
- Affiliations
- Weizmann Institute of Science (IL)
- Stanford University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Halevy, I.
- ORCID
- Halevy, I.
- Venue
- Science
- Published
- 2017-03-10
- Volume
- 355
- Issue
- 6329
- Pages
- 1069-1071
- ISSN
- 0036-8075 (ISSN-L)
- 1095-9203
- OpenAlex
- W2596191265
- Semantic Scholar
- d1155aefb859518868d9838ae977eec9a9854685
- Cited by
- 376
- References
- 10
- Citations by year
- 2026: 27 · 2025: 67 · 2024: 58 · 2023: 41 · 2022: 34 · 2021: 45 · 2020: 38 · 2019: 33 · 2018: 20 · 2017: 11
- FWCI
- 19.82
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Science (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- H2020 European Research Council (award301462, 337183)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Earth and Planetary Sciences › Paleontology › Paleontology and Stratigraphy of Fossils
- Physical Sciences › Earth and Planetary Sciences › Oceanography › Ocean Acidification Effects and Responses
- Physical Sciences › Earth and Planetary Sciences › Atmospheric Science › Geology and Paleoclimatology Research
- Keywords
- seawater pH, paleo-ocean chemistry, Archean ocean, solar brightening, oceanic crust, atmospheric evolution, Earth habitability
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