Climate-induced changes in carbon and nitrogen cycling in the rapidly warming Antarctic coastal ocean

• Main Author: Henley, Sian Frances
• Other Authors: Ganeshram, Raja, Natural Environment Research Council (NERC)
• Format: Doctoral or Postdoctoral Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: The University of Edinburgh 2013
• Subjects: Southern Ocean; biogeochemistry; carbon; nitrogen; isotopes; nutrients; phytoplankton; West Antarctic Peninsula; sea ice; Climate Change; Global Change Research Institute; Antarctic; Antarctic Peninsula; Austral; Marguerite; Marguerite Bay; Antarc*; Sea ice
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1842/7626

The western Antarctic Peninsula (WAP) is a hotspot of climatic and oceanographic change, with a 6°C rise in winter atmospheric temperatures and >1°C warming of the surface ocean since the 1950s. These trends are having a profound impact on the physical environment at the WAP, with widespread glacial retreat, a 40% decline in sea ice coverage and intensification of deep water upwelling. The main objective of this study is to assess the response of phytoplankton productivity to these changes, and implications for the marine carbon and nitrogen cycles in the WAP coastal zone. An extensive suite of biogeochemical and physical oceanographic data was collected over five austral summer growing seasons in northern Marguerite Bay between 2004 and 2010. Concentrations and isotopic compositions (δ¹⁵N, δ¹³C, ¹⁴C) of dissolved nitrate, dissolved inorganic carbon species, particulate nitrogen, organic carbon and chlorophyll a are used in the context of a substantial ancillary dataset to investigate nutrient supply, phytoplankton productivity and nutrient uptake, export flux and the fate of organic material, and the factors underpinning pronounced seasonal and interannual variability. High-resolution biogeochemical time-series data for surface and underlying seawater, sea ice brine, sediment trap material and coretop sediments allow detailed examination of carbon and nitrogen cycle processes under contrasting oceanographic conditions and the interaction between these marine processes and air-sea exchange of climate-relevant CO₂. This study shows that the WAP marine environment is currently a summertime sink for atmospheric CO₂ in most years due to high productivity and biological carbon uptake sufficient to offset the CO₂ supply from circumpolar deep waters, which act as a persistent source of heat, nutrients and CO₂ across the shelf. For the first time, CO₂ sink/source behaviour is parameterised in terms of nitrate utilisation, by exploiting the relationship between CO₂ and nitrate concentrations, and deriving the nitrate ...