ALBERT

Description: We present the first transect of dissolved 10Be depth profiles across the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) in the Atlantic sector. North of the Polar Front the 10Be concentrations increase continuously from very low values at the surface to values of up to 1600 atoms/g at depth. Deep water 10Be concentrations of particular water masses are consistent with earlier results obtained further north. South of the Polar Front and in the Weddell Sea the distribution of 10Be is also characterised by low surface concentrations but below 1000 m depth the concentrations are relatively constant and significantly higher (up to 2000 atoms/g) than further north, probably as a result of mixing and advection of water masses of Pacific origin. Overall the deep water 10Be distribution is obviously not significantly affected by scavenging processes or ice melt and comparison with the density distribution suggests that 10Be can be viewed as a quasi-conservative tracer. This provides a tool for an improved understanding of the behaviour of other more particle reactive trace metals in the Southern Ocean such as 230Th: in deep waters north of the ACC/Weddell Gyre boundary (AWB) 10Be/230Th has a relatively constant value (1.7±0.3×109 atoms/dpm) over a wide density range whereas south of the AWB the ratio is significantly lower (1.1±0.2×109 atoms/dpm). This normalisation to 10Be corroborates that 230Th is enriched by 50% due to accumulation south of the AWB as a consequence of minimal particulate fluxes. The quasi-conservative behaviour deduced from our results also implies that 10Be can only be used as a tracer for Southern Ocean particle fluxes in the past if ocean circulation patterns and water mass residence times did not change significantly.