Temporal and spatial dynamics of CO2 air-sea flux in the Gulf of Maine

Ocean surface layer carbon dioxide (CO2) data collected in the Gulf of Maine from 2004 to 2008 are presented. Monthly shipboard observations are combined with additional higher‐resolution CO2 observations to characterize CO2 fugacity ( fCO2) and CO2 flux over hourly to interannual time scales. Observed fCO2 andCO2 flux dynamics are dominated by a seasonal cycle, with a large spring influx of CO2 and a fall‐to‐winter efflux back to the atmosphere. The temporal results at inner, middle, and outer shelf locations are highly correlated, and observed spatial variability is generally small relative to the monthly to seasonal temporal changes. The averaged annual flux is in near balance and is a net source of carbon to the atmosphere over 5 years, with a value of +0.38 mol m−2 yr−1. However, moderate interannual variation is also observed, where years 2005 and 2007 represent cases of regional source (+0.71) and sink (−0.11) anomalies. We use moored daily CO2 measurements to quantify aliasing due to temporal undersampling, an important error budget term that is typically unresolved. The uncertainty of our derived annual flux measurement is ±0.26 mol m−2 yr−1 and is dominated by this aliasing term. Comparison of results to the neighboring Middle and South Atlantic Bight coastal shelf systems indicates that the Gulf of Maine exhibits a similar annual cycle and range of oceanic fCO2 magnitude but differs in the seasonal phase. It also differs by enhanced fCO2 controls by factors other than temperature‐driven solubility, including biological drawdown, fall‐to‐winter vertical mixing, and river runoff

A Parameter Model of Gas Exchange for the Seasonal Sea Ice Zone

Carbon budgets for the polar oceans require better constraint on air–sea gas exchange in the sea ice zone (SIZ). Here, we utilize advances in the theory of turbulence, mixing and air–sea flux in the ice–ocean boundary layer (IOBL) to formulate a simple model for gas exchange when the surface ocean is partially covered by sea ice. The gas transfer velocity (k) is related to shear-driven and convection-driven turbulence in the aqueous mass boundary layer, and to the mean-squared wave slope at the air–sea interface. We use the model to estimate k along the drift track of ice-tethered profilers (ITPs) in the Arctic. Individual estimates of daily-averaged k from ITP drifts ranged between 1.1 and 22 m d−1, and the fraction of open water (f) ranged from 0 to 0.83. Converted to area-weighted effective transfer velocities (keff), the minimum value of keff was 10−55 m d−1 near f = 0 with values exceeding keff = 5 m d−1 at f = 0.4. The model indicates that effects from shear and convection in the sea ice zone contribute an additional 40% to the magnitude of keff, beyond what would be predicted from an estimate of keff based solely upon a wind speed parameterization. Although the ultimate scaling relationship for gas exchange in the sea ice zone will require validation in laboratory and field studies, the basic parameter model described here demonstrates that it is feasible to formulate estimates of k based upon properties of the IOBL using data sources that presently exist

Pool boiling on modified surfaces using R-123

This article has been made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund.Saturated pool boiling of R-123 was investigated for five horizontal copper surfaces modified by different treatments, namely, an emery-polished surface, a fine sandblasted surface, a rough sandblasted surface, an electron beam-enhanced surface, and a sintered surface. Each 40-mm-diameter heating surface formed the upper face of an oxygen-free copper block, electrically heated by embedded cartridge heaters. The experiments were performed from the natural convection regime through nucleate boiling up to the critical heat flux, with both increasing and decreasing heat flux, at 1.01 bar, and additionally at 2 bar and 4 bar for the emery-polished surface. Significant enhancement of heat transfer with increasing surface modification was demonstrated, particularly for the electron beam-enhanced and sintered surfaces. The emery-polished and sandblasted surface results are compared with nucleate boiling correlations and other published data. © 2014 Syed W. Ahmad, John S. Lewis, Ryan J. McGlen, and Tassos G. Karayiannis Published with license by Taylor & Francis

Direct covariance measurement of CO2 gas transfer velocity during the 2008 Southern Ocean Gas Exchange Experiment: Wind speed dependency

Direct measurements of air-sea heat, momentum, and mass (including CO2, DMS, and water vapor) fluxes using the direct covariance method were made over the open ocean from the NOAA R/V Ronald H. Brown during the Southern Ocean Gas Exchange (SO GasEx) program. Observations of fluxes and the physical processes associated with driving air-sea exchange are key components of SO GasEx. This paper focuses on the exchange of CO2 and the wind speed dependency of the transfer velocity, k, used to model the CO2 flux between the atmosphere and ocean. A quadratic dependence of k on wind speed based on dual tracer experiments is most frequently encountered in the literature. However, in recent years, bubble-mediated enhancement of k, which exhibits a cubic relationship with wind speed, has emerged as a key issue for flux parameterization in high-wind regions. Therefore, a major question addressed in SO GasEx is whether the transfer velocities obey a quadratic or cubic relationship with wind speed. After significant correction to the flux estimates (primarily due to moisture contamination), the direct covariance CO2 fluxes confirm a significant enhancement of the transfer velocity at high winds compared with previous quadratic formulations. Regression analysis suggests that a cubic relationship provides a more accurate parameterization over a wind speed range of 0 to 18 m s−1. The Southern Ocean results are in good agreement with the 1998 GasEx experiment in the North Atlantic and a recent separate field program in the North Sea

Direct measurements of CO2 flux in the Greenland Sea

During summer 2006 eddy correlation CO2 fluxes were measured in the Greenland Sea using a novel system set-up with two shrouded LICOR-7500 detectors. One detector was used exclusively to determine, and allow the removal of, the bias on CO2 fluxes due to sensor motion. A recently published correction method for the CO2-H2O cross-correlation was applied to the data set. We show that even with shrouded sensors the data require significant correction due to this cross-correlation. This correction adjusts the average CO2 flux by an order of magnitude from -6.7 x 10⁻² mol m⁻² day⁻¹ to -0.61 x 10⁻² mol m⁻² day⁻¹, making the corrected fluxes comparable to those calculated using established parameterizations for transfer velocity

Fluxes and gas transfer rates of the biogenic trace gas DMS derived from atmospheric gradients

Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2004. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Geophysical Research 109 (2004): C08S10, doi:10.1029/2003JC001795.Gas transfer rates were determined from vertical profile measurements of atmospheric dimethylsulfide (DMS) gradients over the equatorial Pacific Ocean obtained during the GasEx-2001 cruise. A quadratic relationship between gas transfer velocity and wind speed was derived from the DMS flux measurements; this relationship was in close agreement with a parameterization derived from relaxed eddy accumulation measurements of DMS over the northeastern Pacific Ocean. However, the GasEx-2001 relationship results in gas transfer rates that are a factor 2 higher than gas transfer rates calculated from a parameterization that is based on coincident eddy correlation measurements of CO2 flux. The measurement precision of both the profiling and eddy correlation techniques applied during GasEx-2001 is comparable; the two gas transfer data sets are in agreement within their uncertainty. Differences in the number of samples and the wind speed range over which CO2 and DMS fluxes were measured are likely causes for the observed discrepancy.Funding for this work came from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) and from the NOP project 951203: ‘‘Micrometeorology of air/sea fluxes of carbon dioxide. This work was supported by the Global Carbon Cycle project of the NOAA Office of Global Programs grant NA17RJ1223, National Science Foundation grant OCE-9986724, and NSF grant ATM-0120569

Sea surface pCO2 and O2 in the Southern Ocean during the austral fall, 2008

The physical and biological processes controlling surface mixed layer pCO2 and O2 were evaluated using in situ sensors mounted on a Lagrangian drifter deployed in the Atlantic sector of the Southern Ocean (∼50°S, ∼37°W) during the austral fall of 2008. The drifter was deployed three times during different phases of the study. The surface ocean pCO2 was always less than atmospheric pCO2 (−50.4 to −76.1 μatm), and the ocean was a net sink for CO2 with fluxes averaging between 16.2 and 17.8 mmol C m−2 d−1. Vertical entrainment was the dominant process controlling mixed layer CO2, with fluxes that were 1.8 to 2.2 times greater than the gas exchange fluxes during the first two drifter deployments, and was 1.7 times greater during the third deployment. In contrast, during the first two deployments the surface mixed layer was always a source of O2 to the atmosphere, and air-sea gas exchange was the dominant process occurring, with fluxes that were 2.0 to 4.1 times greater than the vertical entrainment flux. During the third deployment O2 was near saturation the entire deployment and was a small source of O2 to the atmosphere. Net community production (NCP) was low during this study, with mean fluxes of 3.2 to 6.4 mmol C m−2 d−1 during the first deployment and nondetectable (within uncertainty) in the third. During the second deployment the NCP was not separable from lateral advection. Overall, this study indicates that in the early fall the area is a significant sink for atmospheric CO2

Evaluation of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/Coupled-Ocean Atmospheric Response Experiment (NOAA/COARE) air-sea gas transfer parameterization using GasEx data

Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2004. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Geophysical Research 109 (2004): C08S11, doi:10.1029/2003JC001831.During the two recent GasEx field experiments, direct covariance measurements of air-sea carbon dioxide fluxes were obtained over the open ocean. Concurrently, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/Coupled-Ocean Atmospheric Response Experiment air-sea gas transfer parameterization was developed to predict gas transfer velocities from measurements of the bulk state of the sea surface and atmosphere. The model output is combined with measurements of the mean air and sea surface carbon dioxide fugacities to provide estimates of the air-sea CO2 flux, and the model is then tuned to the GasEx-1998 data set. Because of differences in the local environment and possibly because of weaknesses in the model, some discrepancies are observed between the predicted fluxes from the GasEx-1998 and GasEx-2001 cases. To provide an estimate of the contribution to the air-sea flux of gas due to wave-breaking processes, the whitecap and bubble parameterizations are removed from the model output. These results show that moderate (approximately 15 m s−1) wind speed breaking wave gas transfer processes account for a fourfold increase in the flux over the modeled interfacial processes.This work was supported by the NOAA Office of Global Programs, under the leadership of Dr. Lisa Dilling. WHOI was supported by the National Science Foundation grant OCE-9711218

Sea-to-air fluxes from measurements of the atmospheric gradient of dimethylsulfide and comparison with simultaneous relaxed eddy accumulation measurements

We measured vertical profiles of dimethylsulfide (DMS) in the atmospheric marine boundary layer from R/P FLIP during the 2000 FAIRS cruise. Applying Monin-Obukhov similarity theory to the DMS gradients and simultaneous micrometeorological data, we calculated sea-to-air DMS fluxes for 34 profiles. From the fluxes and measured seawater DMS concentrations, we calculated the waterside gas transfer velocity, kw. Gas transfer velocities from the gradient flux approach are within the range of previous commonly used parameterizations of kw as a function of wind speed but are a factor of 2 smaller than simultaneous determinations of transfer velocity using the relaxed eddy accumulation technique. This is the first field comparison of these different techniques for measuring DMS flux from the ocean; the accuracy of the techniques and possible reasons for the discrepancy are discussed

The Gas Transfer through Polar Sea Ice Experiment: Insights into the Rates and Pathways that Determine Geochemical Fluxes

Sea ice is a defining feature of the polar marine environment. It is a critical domain for marine biota and it regulates ocean-atmosphere exchange, including the exchange of greenhouse gases such as CO2 and CH4. In this study, we determined the rates and pathways that govern gas transport through a mixed sea ice cover. N2O, SF6, 3He, 4He, and Ne were used as gas tracers of the exchange processes that take place at the ice-water and air-water interfaces in a laboratory sea ice experiment. Observation of the changes in gas concentrations during freezing revealed that He is indeed more soluble in ice than in water; Ne is less soluble in ice, and the larger gases (N2O and SF6) are mostly excluded during the freezing process. Model estimates of gas diffusion through ice were calibrated using measurements of bulk gas content in ice cores, yielding gas transfer velocity through ice (kice) of ∼5 × 10−4 m d−1. In comparison, the effective air-sea gas transfer velocities (keff) ranged up to 0.33 m d−1 providing further evidence that very little mixed-layer ventilation takes place via gas diffusion through columnar sea ice. However, this ventilation is distinct from air-ice gas fluxes driven by sea ice biogeochemistry. The magnitude of keff showed a clear increasing trend with wind speed and current velocity beneath the ice, as well as the combination of the two. This result indicates that gas transfer cannot be uniquely predicted by wind speed alone in the presence of sea ice