Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2023

DOI

10.1029/2022JC019322

Publication Title

Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans

Volume

128

Issue

8

Pages

e2022JC019322 (1-19)

Abstract

Seasonal formation of Dense Shelf Water (DSW) in the Ross Sea is a direct precursor to Antarctic Bottom Water, which fills the deep ocean with atmospheric gases in what composes the southern limb of the solubility pump. Measurements of seawater noble gas concentrations during katabatic wind events in two Ross Sea polynyas reveal the physical processes that determine the boundary value properties for DSW. This decomposition reveals 5–6 g kg−1 of glacial meltwater in DSW and sea-ice production rates of up to 14 m yr−1 within the Terra Nova Bay polynya. Despite winds upwards of 35 m s−1 during the observations, air bubble injection had a minimal contribution to gas exchange, accounting for less than 0.01 μmols kg−1 of argon in seawater. This suggests the slurry of frazil ice and seawater at the polynya surface inhibits air-sea exchange. Most noteworthy is the revelation that sea-ice formation and glacial melt contribute significantly to the ventilation of DSW, restoring 10% of the gas deficit for krypton, 24% for argon, and 131% for neon, while diffusive gas exchange contributes the remainder. These measurements reveal a cryogenic component to the solubility pump and demonstrate that while sea ice blocks air-sea exchange, sea ice formation and glacial melt partially offset this effect via addition of gases. While polynyas are a small surface area, they represent an important ventilation site within the southern-overturning cell, suggesting that ice processes both enhance and hinder the solubility pump.

Rights

© 2023 The Authors.

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.

Data Availability

Article states: "The noble gas data is available at the US Antarctic Program Data Center (Loose, 2022, https://doi.org/10.15784/601609). Hydrographic data is available through the Marine Geoscience Data System (Ackley, 2017, https://www.marine-geo.org/tools/search/entry.php?id=NBP1704."

Original Publication Citation

Loose, B., Stammerjohn, S., Sedwick, P., & Ackley, S. (2023). Sea ice formation, glacial melt and the solubility pump boundary conditions in the Ross Sea. Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, 128(8), 1-19, Article e2022JC019322. https://doi.org/10.1029/2022JC019322

ORCID

0000-0003-0663-8323 (Sedwick)

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