Wind, convection and fetch dependence of gas transfer velocity in an Arctic sea‐ice lead determined from eddy covariance CO 2 flux measurements

• Published in: Global Biogeochemical Cycles
• Main Authors: Prytherch, J., Yelland, M. J.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: 2021
• Subjects: Arctic; Arctic Ocean; Sea ice
• Online Access: http://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/529464/; https://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/529464/7/2020GB006633.pdf; https://doi.org/10.1029/2020GB006633

The air‐water exchange of trace gases such as CO2 is usually parameterized in terms of a gas transfer velocity, which can be derived from direct measurements of the air‐sea gas flux. The transfer velocity of poorly soluble gases is driven by near‐surface ocean turbulence, which may be enhanced or suppressed by the presence of sea ice. A lack of measurements means that air‐sea fluxes in polar regions, where the oceanic sink of CO2 is poorly known, are generally estimated using open‐ocean transfer velocities scaled by ice fraction. Here, we describe direct determinations of CO2 gas transfer velocity from eddy covariance flux measurements from a mast fixed to ice adjacent to a sea‐ice lead during the summer‐autumn transition in the central Arctic Ocean. Lead water CO2 uptake is determined using flux footprint analysis of water‐atmosphere and ice‐atmosphere flux measurements made under conditions (low humidity and high CO2 signal) that minimise errors due to humidity cross‐talk. The mean gas transfer velocity is found to have a quadratic dependence on wind speed: k660 = 0.179 U102 which is 30% lower than commonly used open‐ocean parameterizations. As such, current estimates of polar ocean carbon uptake likely overestimate gas exchange rates in typical summertime conditions of weak convective turbulence. Depending on the footprint model chosen, the gas transfer velocities also exhibit a dependence on the dimension of the lead, via its impact on fetch length and hence sea state. Scaling transfer velocity parameterizations for regional gas exchange estimates may therefore require incorporating lead width data.