GOHSnap: Updates from the field

• Main Author: Jaime Palter
• Format: Conference Object
• Language: English
• Published: 2023
• Subjects: AMOC; GOHSnap; oxygen; Greenland; Cape Farewell; Labrador Sea; North Atlantic
• Online Access: https://zenodo.org/record/8083604; https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8083604

Over the last century, the ocean has become steadily more depleted in oxygen while also absorbing about 25% of the anthropogenic carbon dioxide added to the atmosphere each year. Therefore, observing gas uptake and transport processes is essential for understanding and predicting the evolution of the ocean and climate system. While it is often assumed that a slowdown in the AMOC will lead to deoxygenation of the deep ocean and a decrease in the uptake and storage of carbon, we have never had observations sufficient to test these assumptions. In this talk, I will describe a collaborative project called Gases in the Overturning and Horizontal circulation of the Subpolar North Atlantic Program (GOHSNAP), in which we deployed oxygen sensors over the full depth of OSNAP moorings in the Labrador Current and on both sides of Cape Farewell, Greenland, and pCO2 sensors at few key locations near the ocean's surface. We are using these additions to the moored array to investigate the rates and processes governing gas exchange and separate the role of the overturning and horizontal circulation on the export of gases from the Labrador Sea. The first gas sensor data from this program was recovered in summer of 2022, so the emphasis of this talk will be on the hydrographic data that led to GOHSNAP's hypotheses, tips and tricks for collecting oxygen data on moorings, and a sneak peek of preliminary results.