Experimental evaluation of planktonic respiration response to warming in the European Arctic Sector

The Arctic Ocean is the region on Earth supporting the steepest warming rate and is also particularly vulnerable due to the vanishing ice cover. Intense warming in the Arctic has strong implications for biological activity and the functioning of an Arctic Ocean deprived of ice cover in summer. We ev...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Polar Biology
Main Authors: Vaquer-Sunyer, Raquel, Duarte, Carlos M., Santiago, Rocío, Wassmann, Paul F., Reigstad, Marit
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Springer 2010
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Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/10261/88677
https://doi.org/10.1007/s00300-010-0788-x
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Summary:The Arctic Ocean is the region on Earth supporting the steepest warming rate and is also particularly vulnerable due to the vanishing ice cover. Intense warming in the Arctic has strong implications for biological activity and the functioning of an Arctic Ocean deprived of ice cover in summer. We evaluated the impact of increasing temperature on respiration rates of surface marine planktonic communities in the European Arctic sector, a property constraining the future role of the Arctic Ocean in the CO2 balance of the atmosphere. We performed experiments under four different temperature elevation regimes (in situ, +2, +4 and +6°C above the temperature of the sampled water) during cruises conducted in the Fram Strait region and off Svalbard during late fall-early winter, spring and summer. During late fall-early winter, where only three different temperatures were used, no response to warming was observed, whereas respiration rates increased in response to warming in spring and summer, although with variable strength. © 2010 Springer-Verlag. Peer Reviewed