Laboratory study on coprecipitation of phosphate with ikaite in sea ice

Ikaite (CaCO3�6H2O) has recently been discovered in sea ice, providing first direct evidence of CaCO3 precipitation in sea ice. However, the impact of ikaite precipitation on phosphate (PO4) concentration has not been considered so far. Experiments were set up at pH from 8.5 to 10.0, salinities from 0 to 105, temperatures from 24°C to 0°C, and PO4 concentrations from 5 to 50 mmol kg-1 in artificial sea ice brine so as to understand how ikaite precipitation affects the PO4 concentration in sea ice under different conditions. Our results show that PO4 is coprecipitated with ikaite under all experimental conditions. The amount of PO4 removed by ikaite precipitation increases with increasing pH. Changes in salinity (S >=35) as well as temperature have little impact on PO4 removal by ikaite precipitation. The initial PO4 concentration affects the PO4 coprecipitation. These findings may shed some light on the observed variability of PO4 concentration in sea ice

The impact of dissolved organic carbon and bacterial respiration on pCO2 in experimental sea ice

Previous observations have shown that the partial pressure of carbon dioxide (pCO2) in sea ice brines is generally higher in Arctic sea ice compared to those from the Antarctic sea ice, especially in winter and early spring. We hypothesized that these differences result from the higher dissolved organic carbon (DOC) content in Arctic seawater: Higher concentrations of DOC in seawater would be reflected in a greater DOC incorporation into sea ice, enhancing bacterial respiration, which in turn would increase the pCO2 in the ice. To verify this hypothesis, we performed an experiment using two series of mesocosms: one was filled with seawater (SW) and the other one with seawater with an addition of filtered humic-rich river water (SWR). The addition of river water increased the DOC concentration of the water from a median of 142 µmol Lwater-1 in SW to 249 µmol Lwater-1 in SWR. Sea ice was grown in these mesocosms under the same physical conditions over 19 days. Microalgae and protists were absent, and only bacterial activity has been detected. We measured the DOC concentration, bacterial respiration, total alkalinity and pCO2 in sea ice and the underlying seawater, and we calculated the changes in dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) in both media. We found that bacterial respiration in ice was higher in SWR: median bacterial respiration was 25 nmol C Lice-1 h-1 compared to 10 nmol C Lice-1 h-1 in SW. pCO2 in ice was also higher in SWR with a median of 430 ppm compared to 356 ppm in SW. However, the differences in pCO2 were larger within the ice interiors than at the surfaces or the bottom layers of the ice, where exchanges at the air–ice and ice–water interfaces might have reduced the differences. In addition, we used a model to simulate the differences of pCO2 and DIC based on bacterial respiration. The model simulations support the experimental findings and further suggest that bacterial growth efficiency in the ice might approach 0.15 and 0.2. It is thus credible that the higher pCO2 in Arctic sea ice brines compared with those from the Antarctic sea ice were due to an elevated bacterial respiration, sustained by higher riverine DOC loads. These conclusions should hold for locations and time frames when bacterial activity is relatively dominant compared to algal activity, considering our experimental conditions

Platelet ice, the Southern Ocean’s hidden ice: a review

Basal melt of ice shelves is not only an important part of Antarctica’s ice-sheet mass budget, but it is also the origin of one of the most peculiar types of sea ice found in the polar oceans: platelet ice. In many regions around coastal Antarctica, tiny ice crystals form and grow in supercooled plumes of Ice Shelf Water, releasing heat into the surrounding ocean. They usually rise towards the surface, eventually becoming trapped under an ice shelf as marine ice. Frequently, masses of those crystals are advected out of the ice-shelf cavity, and accumulate below a solid sea-ice cover to form a semiconsolidated layer. When the overlying sea ice grows into this so-called sub-ice platelet layer, the loose crystals are consolidated, adding additional thickness to the sea ice. These phenomena are generally referred to as platelet ice, although confusion about the terminology is widespread in the literature. The presence of platelet ice has a profound impact on sea-ice properties and processes in several regions of Antarctica, with numerous implications for the local polar marine biosphere. Most notably, sub-ice platelet layers provide a stable, sheltered, nutrient- and food-rich habitat which usually results in a highly productive and uniquely adapted ecosystem. It has also been hypothesised that platelet ice may be an indicator of the state of an ice shelf, although comprehensive time series are limited to the Ross Sea. This paper clears up the terminology by providing exact definitions of the relevant terms.We review platelet-ice formation, observational methods as well as geographical and seasonal occurrence. The physical properties and ecological implications are merged in a way understandable for physicists and biologists alike, to lay the foundation for the interdisciplinary research that is necessary to tackle the current knowledge gaps

Sea ice CO2 flux in the Southern Ocean during mid-winter and early spring

第4回極域科学シンポジウム個別セッション：[OB] 生物圏11月12日（火）13:00-14:00　国立国語研究所 ２階ラウン

The first known virus isolates from Antarctic sea ice have complex infection patterns

Viruses are recognized as important actors in ocean ecology and biogeochemical cycles, but many details are not yet understood. We participated in a winter expedition to the Weddell Sea, Antarctica, to isolate viruses and to measure virus-like particle abundance (flow cytometry) in sea ice. We isolated 59 bacterial strains and the first four Antarctic sea-ice viruses known (PANV1, PANV2, OANV1 and OANV2), which grow in bacterial hosts belonging to the typical sea-ice genera Paraglaciecola and Octadecabacter. The viruses were specific for bacteria at the strain level, although OANV1 was able to infect strains from two different classes. Both PANV1 and PANV2 infected 11/15 isolated Paraglaciecola strains that had almost identical 16S rRNA gene sequences, but the plating efficiencies differed among the strains, whereas OANV1 infected 3/7 Octadecabacter and 1/15 Paraglaciecola strains and OANV2 1/7 Octadecabacter strains. All the phages were cold-active and able to infect their original host at 0 degrees C and 4 degrees C, but not at higher temperatures. The results showed that virus-host interactions can be very complex and that the viral community can also be dynamic in the winter-sea ice.Peer reviewe

Air-ice carbon pathways inferred from a sea ice tank experiment

Air-ice CO2 fluxes were measured continuously using automated chambers from the initial freezing of a sea ice cover until its decay. Cooling seawater prior to sea ice formation acted as a sink for atmospheric CO2, but as soon as the first ice crystals started to form, sea ice turned to a source of CO2, which lasted throughout the whole ice growth phase. Once ice decay was initiated by warming the atmosphere, the sea ice shifted back again to a sink of CO2. Direct measurements of outward ice-atmosphere CO2 fluxes were consistent with the depletion of dissolved inorganic carbon in the upper half of sea ice. Combining measured air-ice CO2 fluxes with the partial pressure of CO2 in sea ice, we determined strongly different gas transfer coefficients of CO2 at the air-ice interface between the growth and the decay phases (from 2.5 to 0.4 mol m−2 d−1 atm−1). A 1D sea ice carbon cycle model including gas physics and carbon biogeochemistry was used in various configurations in order to interpret the observations. All model simulations correctly predicted the sign of the air-ice flux. By contrast, the amplitude of the flux was much more variable between the different simulations. In none of the simulations was the dissolved gas pathway strong enough to explain the large fluxes during ice growth. This pathway weakness is due to an intrinsic limitation of ice-air fluxes of dissolved CO2 by the slow transport of dissolved inorganic carbon in the ice. The best means we found to explain the high air-ice carbon fluxes during ice growth is an intense yet uncertain gas bubble efflux, requiring sufficient bubble nucleation and upwards rise. We therefore call for further investigation of gas bubble nucleation and transport in sea ice

Characterization of elastic scattering near a Feshbach resonance in rubidium 87

The s-wave scattering length for elastic collisions between 87Rb atoms in the state |f,m_f>=|1,1> is measured in the vicinity of a Feshbach resonance near 1007 G. Experimentally, the scattering length is determined from the mean-field driven expansion of a Bose-Einstein condensate in a homogeneous magnetic field. The scattering length is measured as a function of the magnetic field and agrees with the theoretical expectation. The position and the width of the resonance are determined to be 1007.40 G and 0.20 G, respectively.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures minor revisions: added Ref.6, included error bar

Selective incorporation of dissolved organic matter (DOM) during sea ice formation

This study investigated the incorporation of DOM from seawater into >2 day-old sea ice in tanks filled with seawater alone or amended with DOM extracted from the microalga, Chlorella vulgaris. Optical properties, including chromophoric DOM (CDOM) absorption and fluorescence, as well as concentrations of dissolved organic carbon (DOC), dissolved organic nitrogen (DON), dissolved carbohydrates (dCHOs) and dissolved uronic acids (dUAs) were measured. Enrichment factors (EFs), calculated from salinity-normalized concentrations of DOM in bulk ice, brine and frost flowers relative to under-ice water, were generally >1. The enrichment factors varied for different DOM fractions: EFs were the lowest for humic-like DOM (1.0–1.39) and highest for amino acid-like DOM (1.10–3.94). Enrichment was generally highest in frost flowers with there being less enrichment in bulk ice and brine. Size exclusion chromatography indicated that there was a shift towards smaller molecules in the molecular size distribution of DOM in the samples collected from newly formed ice compared to seawater. Spectral slope coefficients did not reveal any consistent differences between seawater and ice samples. We conclude that DOM is incorporated to sea ice relatively more than inorganic solutes during initial formation of sea ice and the degree of the enrichment depends on the chemical composition of DO