ALBERT

Description: Because of its position between the North Atlantic and the Arctic oceans, its young age, small size, and diversity of geological structures, the Norwegian-Greenland Sea provided a unique target for deep drilling on Leg 38 of the Glomar Challenger. From studies of the sediments and basement rocks it was expected to gain insight particularly as to the following: 1) The tectonic framework and evolution of this area with special emphasis on the continental margins and on questions concerned with shifts of spreading axis and existence of foundered continental areas. 2) The youngest times of existence of land bridges between Eurasia and North America and the effect these land bridges had on water circulation and paleoclimates. 3) The date of the initiation of glaciation and dates of glacial advances and retreats. 4) Description of the Tertiary marine microfauna and microflora of the Norwegian-Greenland Sea, which are essentially unknown at present, and investigation of their similarity with microfauna and microflora from other areas.

Description: Obtaining geochemical profiles using X-ray fluorescent (XRF) techniques has become a standard procedure in many sediment core studies. The resulting datasets are not only important tools for palaeoclimatic and palaeoceanographic reconstructions, but also for stratigraphic correlation. The International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) has therefore recently introduced shipboard application of a handheld XRF device, making geochemical data directly available to the science party. In all XRF scanning techniques, the physical properties of wet core halves cause substantial analytical deviations. In order to obtain estimates of element concentrations (e.g. for quantitative analyses of fluxes or mass-balance calculations), a calibration of the scanning data is required. We test whether results from the handheld XRF analysis on discrete samples are suitable for calibrating scanning data. Log-ratios with Ca as a common denominator were calculated. The comparison between the handheld device and conventional measurements show that the latter provide high-quality data describing Al, Si, K, Ca, Ti, Mn, Fe, Zn, Rb and Sr content (R2 compared with conventional measurements: ln(Al/Ca) = 0.99, ln(Si/Ca) = 0.98, ln(K/Ca) = 0.99, ln(Ti/Ca) = 0.99, ln(Mn/Ca) = 0.99, ln(Fe/Ca) = 0.99, ln(Zn/Ca) = 0.99 and ln(Sr/Ca) = 0.99). Our results imply that discrete measurements using the shipboard handheld analyser are suitable for the calibration of XRF scanning data. Our test was performed on downcore sediments from IODP Expedition 355 that display a wide variety of lithologies of both terrestrial and marine origin. The implication is that our findings are valid on a general scale and that shipboard handheld XRF analysis on discrete samples should be used for calibrating XRF scanning data.

Description: Rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations threaten coral reefs globally by causing ocean acidification (OA) and warming. Yet, the combined effects of elevated pCO2 and temperature on coral physiology and resilience remain poorly understood. While coral calcification and energy reserves are important health indicators, no studies to date have measured energy reserve pools (i.e., lipid, protein, and carbohydrate) together with calcification under OA conditions under different temperature scenarios. Four coral species, Acropora millepora, Montipora monasteriata, Pocillopora damicornis, Turbinaria reniformis, were reared under a total of six conditions for 3.5 weeks, representing three pCO2 levels (382, 607, 741 µatm), and two temperature regimes (26.5, 29.0°C) within each pCO2 level. After one month under experimental conditions, only A. millepora decreased calcification (-53%) in response to seawater pCO2 expected by the end of this century, whereas the other three species maintained calcification rates even when both pCO2 and temperature were elevated. Coral energy reserves showed mixed responses to elevated pCO2 and temperature, and were either unaffected or displayed nonlinear responses with both the lowest and highest concentrations often observed at the mid-pCO2 level of 607 µatm. Biweekly feeding may have helped corals maintain calcification rates and energy reserves under these conditions. Temperature often modulated the response of many aspects of coral physiology to OA, and both mitigated and worsened pCO2 effects. This demonstrates for the first time that coral energy reserves are generally not metabolized to sustain calcification under OA, which has important implications for coral health and bleaching resilience in a high-CO2 world. Overall, these findings suggest that some corals could be more resistant to simultaneously warming and acidifying oceans than previously expected.

Description: Under stress, corals and foraminifera may eject algal symbionts ('bleach'), which can increase mortality. How bleaching relates to species viability over warming events is of great interest given current global warming. We use size-specific isotope analyses and abundance counts to examine photosymbiosis and population dynamics of planktonic foraminifera across the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM, ~56 Ma), the most severe Cenozoic global warming event. We find that, unlike modern bleaching-induced mass mortality, populations of photosymbiont-bearing planktonic foraminifera increased in relative abundance during the PETM. Multigenerational adaptive responses including flexibility in photosymbiont associations and excursion taxa evolution may have allowed some photosymbiotic foraminifera to thrive. This dataset contains new records of size-specific stable isotope compositions and relative abundance changes in three clades of planktonic foraminifera from three ocean drilling sites (ODP Site 1209, DSDP Site 401, and ODP Site 690). We also include relevant published datasets used in the corresponding paper. Published high-resolution (~1-10 kyr) bulk isotope records provide a robust framework and inform us on the overall shape and timing of the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), whereas published multispecies planktic and benthic foraminifera provide a range of “expected” values for a given foraminifera size. We intentionally limited our compilation to high-resolution records that provide 1) a generic and/or specific-specific determination (i.e. we generally exclude “bulk” foraminifera isotope data, unless part of the original compilation), 2) a defined range of foraminiferal size, although often only defined by a soft limit i.e. “larger/smaller than X µm”, 3) a continuous sampling resolution that resolves the shape of the PETM, in turn allowing for a data comparison across all sites and across all defined PETM time bins. All published datasets included in our compilation are well known in the palaeoceanography community. Many of these datasets have often been cited and reused in subsequent research, and persistent copy-errors are not uncommon. We used the original datasets and metadata given in the articles themselves. Original data and metadata is classically represented in tables or in the corresponding “Material and Methods” sections, published as supplementary information, or published in online databases such as Pangaea.de. We designed our compilation in a way that the data for all three sites (DSDP Site 401, ODP sites 690 and 1209) were presented in a uniform way, aiding internal comparisons and allowing further compilation work.

Description: The Surface Ocean CO2 Atlas (SOCAT) is a synthesis activity by the international marine carbon research community (〉100 contributors). SOCAT version 6 has 23.4 million quality-controlled, surface ocean fCO2 (fugacity of carbon dioxide) observations from 1957 to 2017 for the global oceans and coastal seas. Calibrated sensor data are also available. Automation allows annual, public releases. SOCAT data is discoverable, accessible and citable. SOCAT enables quantification of the ocean carbon sink and ocean acidification and evaluation of ocean biogeochemical models. SOCAT represents a milestone in biogeochemical and climate research and in informing policy.