Publication Date:
2022-10-26
Description:
Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2021. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans 126(7), (2021): e2021JC017407, https://doi.org/10.1029/2021JC017407.
Description:
The Arctic Ocean receives a large supply of dissolved organic matter (DOM) from its catchment and shelf sediments, which can be traced across much of the basin's upper waters. This signature can potentially be used as a tracer. On the shelf, the combination of river discharge and sea-ice formation, modifies water densities and mixing considerably. These waters are a source of the halocline layer that covers much of the Arctic Ocean, but also contain elevated levels of DOM. Here we demonstrate how this can be used as a supplementary tracer and contribute to evaluating ocean circulation in the Arctic. A fraction of the organic compounds that DOM consists of fluoresce and can be measured using in-situ fluorometers. When deployed on autonomous platforms these provide high temporal and spatial resolution measurements over long periods. The results of an analysis of data derived from several Ice Tethered Profilers (ITPs) offer a unique spatial coverage of the distribution of DOM in the surface 800 m below Arctic sea-ice. Water mass analysis using temperature, salinity and DOM fluorescence, can clearly distinguish between the contribution of Siberian terrestrial DOM and marine DOM from the Chukchi shelf to the waters of the halocline. The findings offer a new approach to trace the distribution of Pacific waters and its export from the Arctic Ocean. Our results indicate the potential to extend the approach to separate freshwater contributions from, sea-ice melt, riverine discharge and the Pacific Ocean.
Description:
Danish Strategic Research Council for the NAACOS project (grant no. 10-093903), the Danish Center for Marine Research (grant no. 2012-01). C. A. S. has received funding from the Independent Research Fund Denmark Grant No. 9040-00266B. Funding for R.M.W.A. came from the US NSF, Arctic Natural Science program grant 1504469. RG-A has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Grant Agreement No. 839311. ITP93 and part of the work by MH and BR were a contribution to the Helmholtz society strategic investment Frontiers in Arctic Marine monitoring (FRAM). The work of BR is a contribution to the cooperative projects Regional Atlantic Circulation and global Change (RACE) grant #03F0824E funded by the German Ministry of Science and Education (BBMF) and Advective Pathways of nutrients and key Ecological substances in the Arctic (APEAR) grants NE/R012865/1, NE/R012865/2 and #03V01461, part of the Changing Arctic Ocean program, jointly funded by the UKRI Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and the BMBF. Support for Krishfield was made possible by grants from the NSF Arctic Observing Network program (PLR-1303644 and OPP-1756100).
Description:
2021-12-27
Keywords:
Arctic Ocean
;
CDOM
;
DOM
;
FDOM
;
Fluorescence
;
Halocline
Repository Name:
Woods Hole Open Access Server
Type:
Article
