Identification

Title

Soluble chromophores in marine snow, seawater, sea ice and frost flowers near Barrow, Alaska

Abstract

We measured light absorption in 42 marine snow, sea ice, seawater, brine, and frost flower samples collected during the OASIS field campaign between February 27 and April 15, 2009. Samples represented multiple sites between landfast ice and open pack ice in coastal areas approximately 5 km west of Barrow, Alaska. The chromophores that are most commonly measured in snow, H2O2, NO3-, and NO2-, on average account for less than 1% of sunlight absorption in our samples. Instead, light absorption is dominated by unidentified residual species, likely organic compounds. Light absorption coefficients for the frost flowers on first-year sea ice are, on average, 40 times larger than values for terrestrial snow samples at Barrow, suggesting very large rates of photochemical reactions in frost flowers. For our marine samples the calculated rates of sunlight absorption and OH production from known chromophores are (0.1-1.4) x 10(14) (photons cm(-3) s(-1)) and (5-70) x 10(-12) (mol L-1 s(-1)), respectively. Our residual spectra are similar to spectra of marine chromophoric dissolved organic matter (CDOM), suggesting that CDOM is the dominant chromophore in our samples. Based on our light absorption measurements we estimate dissolved organic carbon (DOC) concentrations in Barrow seawater and frost flowers as approximately 130 and 360 mu M C, respectively. We expect that CDOM is a major source of OH in our marine samples, and it is likely to have other significant photochemistry as well.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7wh2qmw

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

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keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2012-03-23T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

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Conformity

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version of format

Constraints related to access and use

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Use constraints

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact