Effects of sea-ice and biogeochemical processes and storms on under-ice water f co2 during the winter-spring transition in the high arctic ocean: implications for sea-air co2 fluxes

We performed measurements of carbon dioxide fugacity (fCO(2)) in the surface water under Arctic sea ice from January to June 2015 during the Norwegian young sea ICE (N-ICE2015) expedition. Over this period, the ship drifted with four different ice floes and covered the deep Nansen Basin, the slopes...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans
Main Authors: Fransson, Agneta, Chierici, Melissa, Skjelvan, Ingunn, Olsen, Are, Assmy, Philipp, Peterson, Algot K., Spreen, Gunnar, Ward, Brian
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:unknown
Published: Wiley-Blackwell 2017
Subjects:
southern-ocean
surface-water
atmospheric co2
carbon-dioxide
gas-exchange
wind-speed
variability
seawater
system
north
Arctic
Southern Ocean
Arctic Ocean
Svalbard
Yermak Plateau
Ice Sheet
Nansen Basin
Sea ice
Yermak plateau
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/10379/11548
https://doi.org/10.1002/2016jc012478
Description
Summary:We performed measurements of carbon dioxide fugacity (fCO(2)) in the surface water under Arctic sea ice from January to June 2015 during the Norwegian young sea ICE (N-ICE2015) expedition. Over this period, the ship drifted with four different ice floes and covered the deep Nansen Basin, the slopes north of Svalbard, and the Yermak Plateau. This unique winter-to-spring data set includes the first winter-time under-ice water fCO(2) observations in this region. The observed under-ice fCO(2) ranged between 315 mu atm in winter and 153 mu atm in spring, hence was undersaturated relative to the atmospheric fCO(2). Although the sea ice partly prevented direct CO2 exchange between ocean and atmosphere, frequently occurring leads and breakup of the ice sheet promoted sea-air CO2 fluxes. The CO2 sink varied between 0.3 and 86 mmol C m(-2) d(-1), depending strongly on the open-water fractions (OW) and storm events. The maximum sea-air CO2 fluxes occurred during storm events in February and June. In winter, the main drivers of the change in under-ice water fCO(2) were dissolution of CaCO3 (ikaite) and vertical mixing. In June, in addition to these processes, primary production and sea-air CO2 fluxes were important. The cumulative loss due to CaCO3 dissolution of 0.7 mol C m(-2) in the upper 10 m played a major role in sustaining the undersaturation of fCO(2) during the entire study. The relative effects of the total fCO(2) change due to CaCO3 dissolution was 38%, primary production 26%, vertical mixing 16%, sea-air CO2 fluxes 16%, and temperature and salinity insignificant.

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