α-HCH enantiomer fraction (EF): A novel approach to calculate the ventilation age of water in the Arctic Ocean?

α‐HCH (hexachlorocyclohexane) and the enantiomeric fraction (EF) of its mirror‐image isomers have been determined for water column profiles in the southern Beaufort Sea in 2004 and 2007. Using estimated rates of metabolic degradation, we have applied a simple kinetic model to convert the observed EF...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans
Main Authors: Pućko, Monika, Macdonald, Robie W., Barber, David G., Rosenberg, Bruno, Gratton, Yves, Stern, Gary A.
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: 2012
Subjects:
EF
ER
HCH
alpha‐HCH
hexachlorocyclohexane
sea water age
Arctic
Arctic Ocean
Pacific
Beaufort Sea
Online Access:https://espace.inrs.ca/id/eprint/9542/
https://espace.inrs.ca/id/eprint/9542/1/P2379.pdf
https://doi.org/10.1029/2012JC008130
Description
Summary:α‐HCH (hexachlorocyclohexane) and the enantiomeric fraction (EF) of its mirror‐image isomers have been determined for water column profiles in the southern Beaufort Sea in 2004 and 2007. Using estimated rates of metabolic degradation, we have applied a simple kinetic model to convert the observed EFs to apparent ventilation ages of the water masses in the study region. We found an age of 1.7 ± 0.1 years for the Polar Mixed Layer (PML), 6.6 ± 0.6 for the core of the Pacific Layer centered at salinity 33.1, and 21.7 ± 0.5 years for the core of the Atlantic Layer identified by a Tmax of ∼0.5°C. These ages are in reasonable accord with other methods used to date water masses in the Arctic Ocean suggesting that α‐HCH has an unexploited potential as a dating tool.

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