Estimating underwater light regime under spatially heterogeneous sea ice in the Arctic

Abstract: The vertical diffuse attenuation coefficient for downward plane irradiance (Kd ) is an apparent optical property commonly used in primary production models to propagate incident solar radiation in the water column. In open water, estimating Kd is relatively straightforward when a vertical profile of measurements of downward irradiance, Ed, is available. In the Arctic, the ice pack is characterized by a complex mosaic composed of sea ice with snow, ridges, melt ponds, and leads. Due to the resulting spatially heterogeneous light field in the top meters of the water column, it is difficult to measure at single-point locations meaningful Kd values that allow predicting average irradiance at any depth. The main objective of this work is to propose a new method to estimate average irradiance over large spatially heterogeneous area as it would be seen by drifting phytoplankton. Using both in situ data and 3D Monte Carlo numerical simulations of radiative transfer, we show that (1) the large-area average vertical profile of downward irradiance, Ed(z), under heterogeneous sea ice cover can be represented by a single-term exponential function and (2) the vertical attenuation coefficient for upward radiance (KLu), which is up to two times less influenced by a heterogeneous incident light field than Kd in the vicinity of a melt pond, can be used as a proxy to estimate Ed(z) in the water column

Pan-Arctic distributions of continental runoff in the Arctic Ocean

Continental runoff is a major source of freshwater, nutrients and terrigenous material to the Arctic Ocean. As such, it influences water column stratification, light attenuation, surface heating, gas exchange, biological productivity and carbon sequestration. Increasing river discharge and thawing permafrost suggest that the impacts of continental runoff on these processes are changing. Here, a new optical proxy was developed and implemented with remote sensing to determine the first pan-Arctic distribution of terrigenous dissolved organic matter (tDOM) and continental runoff in the surface Arctic Ocean. Retrospective analyses revealed connections between the routing of North American runoff and the recent freshening of the Canada Basin, and indicated a correspondence between climate-driven changes in river discharge and tDOM inventories in the Kara Sea. By facilitating the real-time, synoptic monitoring of tDOM and freshwater runoff in surface polar waters, this novel approach will help understand the manifestations of climate change in this remote region

QEYSSat 2.0 -- White Paper on Satellite-based Quantum Communication Missions in Canada

We present the white paper developed during the QEYSSat 2.0 study, which was undertaken between June 2021 and March 2022. The study objective was to establish a technology road-map for a Canada-wide quantum network enabled by satellites. We survey the state-of-art in quantum communication technologies, identify the main applications and architectures, review the technical readiness levels and technology bottlenecks and identify a future mission scenario. We report the findings of a dedicated one-day workshop that included Canadian stakeholders from government, industry and academia to gather inputs and insights for the applications and technical road-map. We also provide an overview of the Quantum EncrYption and Science Satellite (QEYSSat) mission expected to launch in 2024-2025 and its anticipated outcomes. One of the main outcomes of this study is that developing the main elements for a Canada-wide quantum internet will have the highest level of impact, which includes Canada-wide entanglement distribution and teleportation. We present and analyze a possible future mission ('QEYSSat 2.0') that would enable a long range quantum teleportation across Canada as an important step towards this vision.Comment: 108 pages, 38 figures, white paper to be submitted to CJ

Data report: X-ray fluorescence core scanning of IODP Site U1474 sediments, Natal Valley, southwest Indian Ocean, Expedition 361

X-ray fluorescence (XRF) core scanning was conducted on core sections from International Ocean Discovery Program Site U1474, located in the Natal Valley off the coast of South Africa. The data were collected at 2 mm resolution along the 255 m length of the splice, but this setting resulted in noisy data. This problem was addressed by applying a 10 point running sum on the XRF data prior to converting peak area to element intensities. This effectively integrates 10 measurements into 1, representing an average over 2 cm resolution, and significantly improves noise in the data. With 25 calibration samples, whose element concentrations were derived using inductively coupled plasma–optical emission spectrometry, the XRF measurements were converted to concentrations using a univariate log-ratio calibration method. The resulting concentrations of terrigenously derived major elements (Al, Si, K, Ti, and Fe) are anticorrelated with Ca concentrations, indicating the main control on sediment chemistry is the variable proportion of terrigenous to in situ produced carbonate material

Quantum Zakharov Model in a Bounded Domain

We consider an initial boundary value problem for a quantum version of the Zakharov system arising in plasma physics. We prove the global well-posedness of this problem in some Sobolev type classes and study properties of solutions. This result confirms the conclusion recently made in physical literature concerning the absence of collapse in the quantum Langmuir waves. In the dissipative case the existence of a finite dimensional global attractor is established and regularity properties of this attractor are studied. For this we use the recently developed method of quasi-stability estimates. In the case when external loads are $C^\infty$ functions we show that every trajectory from the attractor is $C^\infty$ both in time and spatial variables. This can be interpret as the absence of sharp coherent structures in the limiting dynamics.Comment: 27 page

Global attractors for strongly damped wave equations with displacement dependent damping and nonlinear source term of critical exponent

In this paper the long time behaviour of the solutions of 3-D strongly damped wave equation is studied. It is shown that the semigroup generated by this equation possesses a global attractor in H_{0}^{1}(\Omega)\times L_{2}(\Omega) and then it is proved that this global attractor is a bounded subset of H^{2}(\Omega)\times H^{2}(\Omega) and also a global attractor in H^{2}(\Omega)\cap H_{0}^{1}(\Omega)\times H_{0}^{1}(\Omega)

Development of a protocol to obtain the composition of terrigenous detritus in marine sediments -a pilot study from International Ocean Discovery Program Expedition 361

The geochemical and isotopic composition of terrigenous clays from marine sediments can provide important information on the sources and pathways of sediments. International Ocean Discovery Program Expedition 361 drilled sites along the eastern margin of southern Africa that potentially provide archives of rainfall on the continent as well as dispersal in the Agulhas Current. We used standard methods to remove carbonate and ferromanganese oxides and Stokes settling to isolate the clay fractions. In comparison to most previous studies that aimed to extract the detrital signal from marine sediments, we additionally applied a cation exchange wash using CsCl as a final step in the sample preparation. The motivation behind the extra step, not frequently applied, is to remove ions that are gained on the clay surface due to adsorption of authigenic trace metals in the ocean or during the leaching procedure. Either would alter the composition of the detrital fraction if no cation exchange was applied. Moreover, using CsCl will provide an additional measure of the cation exchange capacity (CEC) of the samples. However, no study so far has evaluated the potential and the limitations of such a targeted protocol for marine sediments. Here, we explore the effects of removing and replacing adsorbed cations on the clay surfaces with Cs+, conducting measurements of the chemical compositions, and radiogenic isotopes on a set of eight clay sample pairs. Both sets of samples underwent the same full leaching procedure except that one batch was treated with a final CsCl wash step. In this study, organic matter was not leached because sediments at IODP Site U1478 have relatively low organic content. However, in general, we recommend including that step in the leaching procedure. As expected, significant portions of elements with high concentrations in seawater were replaced by Cs+ (2SD 2.8%.) from the wash, including 75% of the sodium and approximately 25% of the calcium, 10% of the magnesium, and 8% of the potassium. Trace metals such as Sr and Nd, whose isotopes are used for provenance studies, are also found to be in lower concentrations in the samples after the exchange wash. The exchange wash affected the radiogenic isotope compositions of the samples. Neodymium isotope ratios are slightly less radiogenic in all the washed samples. Strontium and Pb isotopes showed significant deviations to either more or less radiogenic values in different samples. The radiogenic isotopes from the CsCl-treated fractions gave more consistent correlations with each other, and we suggest this treatment offers a superior measure of provenance. Although we observed changes in the isotope ratios, the general trend in the data and hence the overall provenance interpretations remained the same. However, the chemical compositions are significantly different. We conclude that a leaching protocol including a cation exchange wash (e.g. CsCl) is useful for revealing the terrestrial fingerprint. CEC could, with further calibration efforts, be useful as a terrestrial chemical weathering proxy

New tools for optical measurements in sea ice

The quantity and quality of sunlight transmitted into and through sea ice is a crucial key necessary to understand the thermodynamic development of the ice cover, upper ocean heat and freshwater budget, as well as the associated primary production. Due to its solid impenetrable nature, most optical measurements so far have been conducted above and underneath the sea ice covering our polar oceans. Only very limited measurements have been carried out inside the ice cover itself. This strongly limits our current knowledge of the vertically varying inherent optical properties (IOP) of sea ice, as well as the geometric shape of the in-ice light field. Both factors currently limit our abilities to reliably model radiative transfer in sea ice. Here we present multiple new tools that can fill this observational gap and provide comprehensive optical measurements within the ice: This includes a chain of multispectral light sensors for seasonal long-term monitoring. It is derived from the proven design of the newest generation of ice-mass-balance buoys with digital thermistor strings and enables a non-destructive measurement with flexible geometry. We present data from a first prototype deployed together with an array of drifting ice observatories at the North Pole in September 2018. These vertically resolved in-ice light profiles are compared to in-ice measurements with a newly designed in-ice optical profiler system based on the well-proven TriOS Ramses hyperspectral radiometers. Combining expertise from photonics, medical and sea-ice science enables the ongoing development of a set of endoscopic probes allowing optical studies in sea ice with minimum disturbance of the ice. This includes in-ice microscopy for in-situ ice algal investigations, a UV-spectrometer to observe brine nitrate concentration in situ, a reflectance probe for high-resolution direct determination of inherent optical properties, as well as a radiance camera for quantification of the angular radiance distribution. Here we present data from the first field tests during the Arctic field season 2018. First ruggedized prototypes could be available to the scientific community soon

Anomalous diffusion in polymers: long-time behaviour

We study the Dirichlet boundary value problem for viscoelastic diffusion in polymers. We show that its weak solutions generate a dissipative semiflow. We construct the minimal trajectory attractor and the global attractor for this problem.Comment: 13 page