The SOLAS air-sea gas exchange experiment (SAGE) 2004

• Published in: Deep Sea Research Part II: Topical Studies in Oceanography
• Main Authors: Harvey, Mike J., Law, Cliff S., Smith, Murray J., Hall, Julie A., Abraham, Edward R., Stevens, Craig L., Hadfield, Mark G., Ho, David T., Ward, Brian, Archer, Stephen D., Cainey, Jill M., Currie, Kim I., Devries, Dawn, Ellwood, Michael J., Hill, Peter, Jones, Graham B., Katz, Dave, Kuparinen, Jorma, Macaskill, Burns, Main, William, Marriner, Andrew, McGregor, John, McNeil, Craig L., Minnett, Peter J., Nodder, Scott D., Peloquin, Jill, Pickmere, Stuart, Pinkerton, Matthew H., Safi, Karl A., Thompson, Rona, Walkington, Matthew, Wright, Simon W., Ziolkowski, Lori A.
• Format: Report
• Language: English
• Published: 2010
• Subjects: Air-sea gas exchange; Iron fertilisation; Ocean biogeochemistry; SOLAS; Antarctic; Bounty Trough; New Zealand; Antarc*
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/1912/4087

Author Posting. © The Author(s), 2010. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Elsevier B.V. for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Deep Sea Research Part II: Topical Studies in Oceanography 58 (2011): 753-763, doi:10.1016/j.dsr2.2010.10.015. The SOLAS air-sea gas exchange experiment (SAGE) was a multiple-objective study investigating gas-transfer processes and the influence of iron fertilisation on biologically driven gas exchange in high-nitrate low-silicic acid low-chlorophyll (HNLSiLC) Sub-Antarctic waters characteristic of the expansive Subpolar Zone of the southern oceans. This paper provides a general introduction and summary of the main experimental findings. The release site was selected from a pre-voyage desktop study of environmental parameters to be in the south-west Bounty Trough (46.5°S 172.5°E) to the south-east of New Zealand and the experiment conducted between mid-March and mid-April 2004. In common with other mesoscale iron addition experiments (FeAX’s), SAGE was designed as a Lagrangian study quantifying key biological and physical drivers influencing the air-sea gas exchange processes of CO2, DMS and other biogenic gases associated with an iron-induced phytoplankton bloom. A dual tracer SF6/3He release enabled quantification of both the lateral evolution of a labelled volume (patch) of ocean and the air-sea tracer exchange at the 10’s of km’s scale, in conjunction with the iron fertilisation. Estimates from the dual-tracer experiment found a quadratic dependency of the gas exchange coefficient on windspeed that is widely applicable and describes air-sea gas exchange in strong wind regimes. Within the patch, local and micrometeorological gas exchange process studies (100 m scale) and physical variables such as near-surface turbulence, temperature microstructure at the interface, wave properties, and wind speed were quantified to further assist the development of gas exchange models for high-wind environments. ...