CO2 supply from the North Sea and the Baltic Sea to the North Atlantic Ocean - evidence for the continental shelf pump

Coastal and marginal seas are thought to act as a continental shelf pump transporting CO2 from the atmosphere to the open oceans. The CO2 uptake in coastal seas is triggered by high biological activity increasing the CO2 concentrations of their waters which finally are transported to the open ocean. The North Sea and Baltic Sea located in north-west Europe are connected via the Skagerrak where the Baltic Sea water first enters the North Sea. The North Sea the provides then link to the North Atlantic Ocean. Carbon budgets for the Baltic Sea and the North Sea will be presented in order to provide evidence that in both seas the transfer of CO2, i.e. the continental shelf pump, acts in two different, but characteristic pattern. The Baltic Sea as a brackish water system collects river water and one might even call it as an estuarine system in a broader sense. Two major drainage areas provide the fresh water supply to the Baltic Sea: The Scandinavian shield supply CO2 –poor waters and the north-east European continent CO2 –rich waters. During the transport of Baltic Sea water to the North Sea the CO2 concentrations increase continuously. Riverine inputs in part control primary production in the Baltic Sea, however the major control mechanism is the winter nutrient concentrations. These are established by an interaction of production, remineralisation, export and riverine and atmospheric inputs on decadal time scale because of the residence time of the Baltic Sea water of approximately 25years. The Baltic Sea thus acts as a continental shelf pump for atmospheric CO2 which injects CO2-rich water to the Atlantic Ocean (injection pump). In contrast the North Sea water is renewed once to twice per year most notably by water from the North Atlantic Ocean. The major control mechanism of the biological activity in the North Sea are thus the continuous (and - in comparison to the Baltic Sea - high) nutrient inputs for the North Atlantic Ocean. For the CO2 export from the North Sea to the Atlantic Ocean this means that the water is enriched by CO2 during its 6-12 month travel through the North Sea. Having in mind that almost no burial occurs in the North Sea, the North Sea acts as a continental shelf pump for atmospheric CO2 by increasing the CO2 concentrations in the Atlantic waters while they are bypassing through the North Sea (bypass-pump)

Distribution and air-water exchange of carbon dioxide in the Scheldt plume off the Belgian coast

In the present paper we report partial pressure of CO2 (pCO2) data obtained off the Belgian coast during 24 cruises. The temporal and spatial resolution of this data set allows us to discuss satisfactorily seasonal and inter-annual variability of pCO2 in the study area. The dynamics of pCO2 are described using two approaches: fixed reference stations and area survey cruises. The air-water fluxes of CO2 in the Scheldt estuarine plume and in the outerplume region are estimated quantitatively, showing that these areas correspond respectively to a net annual source and sink of atmospheric CO2. The annually integrated air-water fluxes for the Scheldt estuarine plume range between +1.1 and +1.9 mol m−2 year−1 as a function of the formulation of the exchange coefficient of CO2. The annual net emission of CO2 from the estuarine plume to the atmosphere is estimated to be between +2.3 to +4.0 Gmol year−1 which represents 17 to 29% of the estimate reported in the literature for the Scheldt inner estuary

Distribution of surface carbon dioxide and air-sea exchange in the upwelling system off the Galician coast

Data on the distribution of the partial pressure of CO2 (pCO2) were obtained during six cruises off the Galician coast, a region characterized by a seasonal upwelling. The values of pCO2 over the continental shelf are highly variable and range between 265 and 415 matm during the upwelling season and between 315 and 345 matm during the downwelling season. Both the continental shelf and off-shelf waters behave as significant net sinks of atmospheric CO2. The computation of the air-sea fluxes of CO2 over the continental shelf yields a net influx in the range of 2.3 (±0.6) to 4.7 (±1.0) mmol C m 2 d 1 during the upwelling season and 3.5 (±0.8) to 7.0 (±1.5) mmol C m 2 d 1 on an annual basis. During the upwelling season and on an annual basis, although the observed air-sea gradients of CO2 over the continental shelf are significantly stronger than those in off-shelf waters, the computed air-sea CO2 fluxes are not significantly different because of the important incertitude introduced in the calculations by the estimated error on wind speed measurements. The presence of upwelling filaments increases the influx of atmospheric CO2 in the off-shelf waters. During summer, important short-term variations of pCO2 are observed that are related to both upwelling and temperature variations. During winter the cooling of water causes important undersaturation of CO2 related to the effect of temperature on the dissolved inorganic carbon equilibrium constants

Direct and indirect pCO2 measurements in a wide range of pCO2 and salinity values

Recent improvements in both Infra-red spectroscopy and equilibrator techniques have allowed to determine, for the first time, pCO2 using simultaneously and continuously both the direct and indirect methods in an estuary where pCO2 values range from 500 to 8500 µatm and salinity from 0 to 30. Our results show that both methods are in excellent agreement in the whole estuary (r2 = 0.999, n = 1075, p < 0.0001). Thus, the NBS (US National Bureau of Standards) scale, although inadequate for seawater samples, is appropriate for estuarine waters and can be applied with confidence to calculate pCO2