Radium inputs into the Arctic Ocean from rivers a basin‐wide estimate

• Published in: Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans
• Main Authors: Bullock, Emma J., Kipp, Lauren, Moore, Willard S., Brown, Kristina A., Mann, Paul J., Vonk, Jorien E., Zimov, Nikita S., Charette, Matthew A.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: American Geophysical Union 2022
• Subjects: Radium isotopes; Arctic Ocean; River fluxes; Arctic; Climate change; Ice; permafrost
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/1912/29772

© The Author(s), 2022. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Bullock, E., Kipp, L., Moore, W., Brown, K., Mann, P., Vonk, J., Zimov, N., & Charette, M. Radium inputs into the Arctic Ocean from rivers a basin‐wide estimate. Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, 127(9), (2022): e2022JC018964, https://doi.org/10.1029/2022jc018964. Radium isotopes have been used to trace nutrient, carbon, and trace metal fluxes inputs from ocean margins. However, these approaches require a full accounting of radium sources to the coastal ocean including rivers. Here, we aim to quantify river radium inputs into the Arctic Ocean for the first time for 226Ra and to refine the estimates for 228Ra. Using new and existing data, we find that the estimated combined (dissolved plus desorbed) annual 226Ra and 228Ra fluxes to the Arctic Ocean are [7.0–9.4] × 1014 dpm y−1 and [15–18] × 1014 dpm y−1, respectively. Of these totals, 44% and 60% of the river 226Ra and 228Ra, respectively are from suspended sediment desorption, which were estimated from laboratory incubation experiments. Using Ra isotope data from 20 major rivers around the world, we derived global annual 226Ra and 228Ra fluxes of [7.4–17] × 1015 and [15–27] × 1015 dpm y−1, respectively. As climate change spurs rapid Arctic warming, hydrological cycles are intensifying and coastal ice cover and permafrost are diminishing. These river radium inputs to the Arctic Ocean will serve as a valuable baseline as we attempt to understand the changes that warming temperatures are having on fluxes of biogeochemically important elements to the Arctic coastal zone. This study was a broad, collaborative effort that would not have been possible without contributions from numerous funding sources, including the National Science Foundation (NSF-0751525, NSF-1736277, NSF-1458305, NSF-1938873, NSF-2048067, NSF-2134865), the NERC-BMBF project CACOON [NE/R012806/1] (UKRI NERC) and BMBF-03F0806A, and an ...