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USGS Arctic Ocean Carbon Cruise 2010: Field Activity H-03-10-AR to Collect Carbon Data in the Arctic Ocean, August - September 2010

By Lisa L. Robbins,¹ Kimberly K. Yates,¹ Matthew D. Gove,² Paul O. Knorr,¹ Jonathan Wynn,³ Robert H. Byrne,⁴ and Xuewu Liu⁴

U.S. Department of the Interior
U.S. Geological Survey
St. Petersburg Coastal and Marine Science Center

Publications are available from USGS Information Services, Box 25286, Federal Center, Denver, CO 80225-0046 (telephone 1-888-ASK-USGS; e-mail: infoservices@usgs.gov).

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Page Contents: Information Statement System Requirements Introduction Healy 2010 Cruise Overview of Data Collected Suggested Citation References Cited

Information Statement

This database, identified as U.S. Geological Survey Data Series 741, has been approved for release and publication by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). Although this database has been subjected to rigorous review and is substantially complete, the USGS reserves the right to revise the data pursuant to further analysis and review. Furthermore, it is released on condition that neither the USGS nor the U.S. Government may be held liable for any damages resulting from its authorized or unauthorized use.

System Requirements

This disc is readable on any computing platform that has standard CD driver software installed. The minimum software requirements are a Web browser, a portable document format (PDF) reader, and a text editor. If you cannot fully access the information on this page, please contact USGS Information Services at infoservices@usgs.gov or 1-888-ASK-USGS.

Introduction

Ocean Acidification

Carbon dioxide (CO₂) in the atmosphere is absorbed at the surface of the ocean by reacting with seawater to form carbonic acid, a weak, naturally occurring acid. As atmospheric carbon dioxide increases, the concentration of carbonic acid in seawater also increases, causing a decrease in ocean pH and carbonate mineral saturation states, a process known as ocean acidification. The oceans have absorbed approximately 525 billion tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, or about one-quarter to one-third of the anthropogenic carbon emissions released since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution (Sabine and others, 2004). Global surveys of ocean chemistry have revealed that seawater pH has decreased by about 0.1 units (from a pH of 8.2 to 8.1) since the 1700s due to absorption of carbon dioxide (Caldeira and Wickett, 2003; Orr and others, 2005; Raven and others, 2005). Modeling studies, based on Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) CO₂ emission scenarios, predict that atmospheric carbon dioxide levels could reach more than 500 parts per million (ppm) by the middle of this century and 800 ppm by the year 2100, causing an additional decrease in surface water pH of 0.3 pH units. Ocean acidification is a global threat and is already having profound and deleterious effects on the geology, biology, chemistry, and socioeconomic resources of coastal and marine habitats (Raven and others, 2005; Ruttiman, 2006). The polar and sub-polar seas have been identified as the bellwethers for global ocean acidification.

Arctic Ocean

Figure 1. Study area in Arctic Ocean. Land is brown, shallow water is light blue, deeper water is dark blue.

The Arctic Ocean covers an area of 14,056,000 square kilometers (km²) (fig. 1), has a fairly constant temperature of 0 degrees Celcius (°C), and supports some of the most productive marine areas in the world. Its cold waters absorb carbon dioxide more rapidly than it is absorbed by warmer seawater. An increase in temperature of approximately 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit (°F), over the past 150 years, has increased melting of Arctic ice. Until recently, the perennial ice cover has prohibited significant equilibration of CO₂ with the atmosphere, creating a polar mixed layer that has lower partial pressure of CO₂ (pCO₂) levels than those found in the atmosphere. Over the last three decades, retreat of summertime sea ice cover has exposed shelf waters to the atmosphere and has allowed additional absorption of atmospheric CO₂. The combination of these processes accelerates the rate at which pH and carbonate mineral saturation state decrease (Bates and others, 2006). Models have projected that the entire Arctic Ocean will become undersaturated with respect to carbonate minerals in the next decade (Orr and others, 2005; Steinacher and others 2009a,b). However, some recent field results indicate that parts of the Arctic Ocean may already be undersaturated in the late summer months, when ice melt is at its largest extent (Olaffson and others, 2009; Yamamoto-Kawai and others, 2009). The uncertainty of the models is based on lack of data. A high spatial resolution approach to measuring the chemistry of the Arctic Ocean has not been attempted, and baselines to gage future change have not been established. The Arctic Ocean is a key area in which expanded time series studies of coastal and open ocean seawater chemistry will provide critical information to scientists and decision-makers to monitor the progress of ocean acidification and place it in context with other global climate change studies (Robbins and others, 2010).

A number of studies have shown that decreased pH and mineral saturation state impair the ability of many fish and shellfish to grow and will affect many parts of the food chain from primary producers to higher trophic organisms (Comeau and others, 2009). High-latitude marine organisms often exhibit low metabolic rates and very slow development and growth rates when compared with similar taxa at middle or low latitudes (Fabry and others, 2009). Because of their prolonged lifetimes, fewer generations will have opportunities for successful acclimation or adaptation to seawater that will become progressively elevated in dissolved CO₂. Although many physiological processes in diverse organisms may be affected by rising ocean acidity, it has been suggested that the declining carbonate mineral saturation states of aragonite and calcite in surface waters, and establishment of corrosive conditions in some regions, may impact high-latitude planktonic and benthic calcifiers (Comeau and others, 2009; Fabry and others, 2009). Because of these factors, marine food supplies could be reduced with significant implications for food production and security for indigenous populations that are dependent on fish protein.

Healy 2010 Cruise

From August 4 to September 6, 2010, a joint operation between the United States and Canadian governments occurred to collect seismic-reflection, multibeam bathymetric and high-resolution chirp data aboard the Canadian Coast Guard Ship (CCGS) Louis S. St-Laurent and U.S. Coast Guard Cutter (USCGC) Healy icebreakers. These operations were part of the U.S. interagency Extended Continental Shelf Project to determine the limits of the continental shelf in the Arctic Ocean. The Chief Scientist aboard the USCGC Healy was U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) scientist Brian Edwards. On a non-interference basis, a USGS Ocean Acidification Team participated on the Healy to collect baseline water data in the Canada Basin north of Alaska. The USGS Ocean Acidification Team, led by Lisa Robbins, included both shipboard and home-based team members. A number of hypotheses were tested and questions asked associated with ocean acidification, including:

• How do pCO₂ fluxes compare within the Canada Basin?
• What is the saturation state for different parts of the basin?
• How does saturation state compare to other regions? If temperature was not a factor, how is the saturation state of the Arctic Ocean responding to increased atmospheric CO₂?
• What is the buffering capacity of the water (Revelle factor)?
• What kind of variability does carbon demonstrate in the Arctic (near shore versus offshore)?

Overview of Data Collected

Collaborating with the University of South Florida (USF), the U.S. Geological Survey used a state of the art flow-through Multiparameter Inorganic Carbon Analyzer (MICA) (Liu and others, 2006). The MICA collected continuous measurements every 2 minutes (min) of pCO₂, pH, and total carbon (TCO₂) in seawater. In addition, discrete samples were collected for on-board measurement of pH and total alkalinity (TA). Water was also collected for TA and TCO₂ analyses to be performed land-side. During the cruise, instrumentation on the USCGC Healy continuously recorded temperature, salinity, dissolved oxygen, and fluorescence of surface water; these parameters were collected also during vertical casts of a Niskin rosette. Discrete surface and depth-profile water samples were taken for nutrient, isotope, and elemental analyses in order to supplement our understanding of the Arctic carbonate system. During one Niskin cast, water was filtered onboard to obtain micro-organismal and microbiological community data, plus particulate organic carbon and particulate inorganic carbon data (not reported here).

Suggested Citation

Robbins, L.L., Yates, K.K., Gove, M.D., Knorr, P.O., Wynn, Jonathan, Byrne, R.H., and Liu, Xuewu, 2013, USGS Arctic Ocean carbon cruise 2010: Field activity H-03-10-AR to collect carbon data in the Arctic Ocean, August - September 2010: U.S. Geological Survey Data Series 741, 1 CD.

References Cited

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Bates, N.R., Moran, S.B., Hansell, D.A., and Mathis, J.T., 2006, An increasing CO₂ sink in the Arctic Ocean due to sea-ice loss: Geophysical Research Letters, v. 33, 7 p.

Caldeira, Ken, and Wickett, M.E., 2003, Anthropogenic carbon and ocean: Nature, v. 425, no. 6956, p. 365, available at http://pangea.stanford.edu/research/Oceans/GES205/Caldeira_Science_Anthropogenic%20Carbon%20and%20ocean%20pH.pdf.

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Comeau, S., Gorsky, G., Jeffree, R., Teyssie, J.-L., and Gattuso, J.-P., 2009, Impact of ocean acidification on a key Arctic pelagic mollusc (Limacina helicina): Biogeosciences, v. 6, no. 9, p. 1877-1882.

Dickson, A.G., 1990, Standard potential of the reaction AgCl(s) + .5H₂(g) = Ag(s) + HCl(aq) and the standard acidity constant of the ion HSO₄^- in synthetic sea water from 273.15 to 318.15 K: The Journal of Chemical Thermodynamics, v. 22, no. 2, p. 113-127.

Dickson, A.G., Sabine, C.L., and Christian, J.R., eds., 2007, Guide to best practices for ocean CO₂ measurements: PICES Special Publication 3, 191 p.

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Ho, D.T., Law, C.S., Smith, M.J., Schlosser, Peter, Harvey, Mike, and Hill, Peter, 2006, Measurements of air-sea gas exchange at high wind speeds in the Southern Ocean: Implications for global parameterizations: Geophysical Research Letters, v. 33, 6 p.

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Lueker, T.J., Dickson, A.G., and Keeling, C.D., 2000, Ocean pCO₂ calculated from dissolved inorganic carbon, alkalinity, and equations from K1 and K2 - Validation based on laboratory measurements of CO₂ in gas and seawater at equilibrium: Marine Chemistry, v. 70, p. 105-119.

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Robbins, L.L., Yates, K., Feely, R., and Fabry, V., 2010, Monitoring and assessment of ocean acidification in the Arctic Ocean: Scoping paper for Arctic Mapping and Assessment Program: U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 2010-1227, 9 p. available at https://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2010/1227/.

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