Beryllium-7 concentrations in snow, ice, seawater, and aerosols during the MOSAiC expedition

DOI

Atmospheric transport and deposition of aerosols is an important delivery mechanism of natural and contaminant trace elements (TEs) to the Arctic, but direct measurements of TE fluxes are difficult and unreliable. The naturally occurring isotope Beryllium-7 (Be-7) can be used as a tracer of aerosol deposition and to provide reliable seasonal TE flux estimates. Be-7 is a cosmic ray produced isotope (half life 53.3 days) that is deposited upon the ocean surface primarily by precipitation. The standing crop (inventory) of Be-7 in the surface ocean (including snow and ice) affords a way to determine the deposition flux of this isotope. At steady state, the input flux of Be-7 is balanced by the decay rate of the Be-7 inventory integrated over the water column, sea ice and snow. The ability to readily derive Be-7 fluxes from ocean/ice/snow inventories provides a means to link the chemical concentrations of trace elements in aerosols to their respective atmospheric deposition fluxes through the following relationship: Flux(TEs) = Flux(Be-7) * [TEs] / [Be-7]. where [TEs] and [Be-7] are the aerosol concentrations of trace elements and Be-7, respectively. In these datasets, we present concentrations of Be-7 in surface ocean water, ice cores, snow, frost flower, and aerosol samples collected during the MOSAiC expedition in the Central Arctic Ocean from October 2019 to May 2020.

Identifier
DOI https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.945414
Metadata Access https://ws.pangaea.de/oai/provider?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=datacite4&identifier=oai:pangaea.de:doi:10.1594/PANGAEA.945414
Provenance
Creator Stephens, Mark ORCID logo
Publisher PANGAEA
Publication Year 2022
Funding Reference Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research, Bremerhaven https://doi.org/10.13039/501100003207 Crossref Funder ID AFMOSAiC-1_00 Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate; Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research, Bremerhaven https://doi.org/10.13039/501100003207 Crossref Funder ID AWI_PS122_00 Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate / MOSAiC; National Science Foundation https://doi.org/10.13039/100000001 Crossref Funder ID 1753423 https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1753423 Collaborative Research: Defining the Atmospheric Deposition of Trace Elements into the Arctic Ocean-Ice Ecosystem During the Year-Long MOSAiC Ice Drift
Rights Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
OpenAccess true
Representation
Resource Type Publication Series of Datasets; Collection
Format application/zip
Size 4 datasets
Discipline Earth System Research
Spatial Coverage (8.174W, 80.661S, 128.929E, 88.496N)
Temporal Coverage Begin 2019-10-24T12:00:00Z
Temporal Coverage End 2020-06-02T17:35:00Z