CO2 deposition over the multi-year ice of the western Weddell Sea

• Published in: Geophysical Research Letters
• Main Authors: Zemmelink, Hendrik J., Delille, Bruno, Tison, Jean-Louis, Hintsa, Eric J., Houghton, Leah A., Dacey, John W. H.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: American Geophysical Union 2006
• Subjects: Ner; Weddell; Weddell Sea
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/1912/3328

Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2006. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Geophysical Research Letters 22 (2006): L13606, doi:10.1029/2006GL026320. Field measurements by eddy correlation (EC) indicate an average uptake of 0.6 g CO2 m−2 d−1 by the ice-covered western Weddell Sea in December 2004. At the same time, snow that covers ice floes of the western Weddell Sea becomes undersaturated with CO2 relative to the atmosphere during early summer. Gradients of CO2 from the ice to the atmosphere do not support significant diffusive fluxes and are not strong enough to explain the observed CO2 deposition. We hypothesize that the transport of air through the snow pack is controlled by turbulence and that undersaturation of CO2 is caused by biological productivity at the ice-snow and snow-atmosphere interface. The total carbon uptake by the multi-year ice zone of the western Weddell Sea in December could have been as high as 6.6 Tg C y−1. This work was financially supported by the Marie Curie Training Site Fellowship (contract HPMF-CT-2002-01865) and by NERC (award ref. NER/B/S/2003/00844). This research was also supported in part by Belgian Science Policy (contract EV/12/7E, SD/CA/ 03A -Belcanto) and Belgian French Community (ARC-contract 02/07-287 - Sibclim), and by the U.S. National Science Foundation (OCE- 0327601).