Carbon dioxide partial pressures in arctic surface waters1

• Main Authors: Putrick I. Coyne, John J. Kelley
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Arctic; Barrow; Alaska
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.549.1568; http://www.aslo.org/lo/toc/vol_19/issue_6/0928.pdf

Seasonal changes in the CO, partial prcssurc (PCO,) regime for an arctic freshwater pond and lake near Barrow, Alaska, were measured by infrared gas analysis by determining the CO, concentration of air in equilibrium with the water. These waters were generally supersaturated in CO, with respect to air throughout the period of open water and constitute a CO, source to the arctic atmosphere. Meltwater standing on the bottomfast ice of the lake in spring and water beneath the newly formed ice in fall also had COz partial pressures greater than ambient air. The seasonal mean COz partial pressure gradient between the water and the ambient air was 3972185 ppm for the pond and 115283 ppm for the lake. PC02 was inversely rclatcd to wind speed and water temperature but directly related to sediment tcmpcrature. Evasion rate cocfficicnts calculated for the lake, based on in situ rate expcrimcnts, indicated an average transfer of 0.3450.17 mg COz cm- ” atm-l min-l to the atmosphcrc. Surface water is a significant part of the landscape of the arctic coastal plain of