Publication Date:
2022-10-26
Description:
© The Author(s), 2019. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in DeGrandpre, M. D., Lai, C., Timmermans, M., Krishfield, R. A., Proshutinsky, A., & Torres, D. Inorganic carbon and pCO(2) variability during ice formation in the Beaufort Gyre of the Canada Basin. Journal of Geophysical Research-Oceans, 124(6), (2019): 4017-4028, doi:10.1029/2019JC015109.
Description:
Solute exclusion during sea ice formation is a potentially important contributor to the Arctic Ocean inorganic carbon cycle that could increase as ice cover diminishes. When ice forms, solutes are excluded from the ice matrix, creating a brine that includes dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) and total alkalinity (AT). The brine sinks, potentially exporting DIC and AT to deeper water. This phenomenon has rarely been observed, however. In this manuscript, we examine a ~1 year pCO2 mooring time series where a ~35‐μatm increase in pCO2 was observed in the mixed layer during the ice formation period, corresponding to a simultaneous increase in salinity from 27.2 to 28.5. Using salinity and ice based mass balances, we show that most of the observed increases can be attributed to solute exclusion during ice formation. The resulting pCO2 is sensitive to the ratio of AT and DIC retained in the ice and the mixed layer depth, which controls dilution of the ice‐derived AT and DIC. In the Canada Basin, of the ~92 μmol/kg increase in DIC, 17 μmol/kg was taken up by biological production and the remainder was trapped between the halocline and the summer stratified surface layer. Although not observed before the mooring was recovered, this inorganic carbon was likely later entrained with surface water, increasing the pCO2 at the surface. It is probable that inorganic carbon exclusion during ice formation will have an increasingly important influence on DIC and pCO2 in the surface of the Arctic Ocean as seasonal ice production and wind‐driven mixing increase with diminishing ice cover.
Description:
Research Associate Cory Beatty (University of Montana) prepared the CO2 instruments and helped with the mooring deployments and data processing. Pierce Fix (undergraduate intern, University of Montana) helped with the mass balance modeling. The moorings were designed and deployed by personnel at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Michiyo Yamamoto‐Kawai (University of Tokyo) and Marty Davelaar (Institute of Ocean Sciences; IOS) provided the alkalinity and dissolved inorganic carbon data. We thank the captain, officers, crew, and chief scientists (Bill Williams and Sarah Zimmerman, IOS) of the CCGS Louis S. St. Laurent. The data used in this study are available through the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) Arctic Data Center (https://arcticdata.io). This research was made possible by grants from the NSF Arctic Observing Network program (ARC‐1107346, PLR‐1302884, PLR‐1504410, and PLR‐1723308).
Keywords:
Sea ice
;
Dissolved inorganic carbon
;
Carbon cycle
;
Solute exclusion
;
Partial pressure of CO2
;
Arctic Ocean
Repository Name:
Woods Hole Open Access Server
Type:
Article
