Carbon dioxide and acetone air-sea fluxes over the southern Atlantic.
Measurements of CO2 and acetone fluxes have been made over a large-scale, naturally occurring high latitude phytoplankton bloom in the remote South Atlantic. Shipborne micrometeorological methods for direct atmospheric flux measurement have been applied to determine the direction and size of the CO2 and acetone fluxes. Previous results suggest that high latitude oligotrophic ocean regions are sinks of acetone, whereas high productivity regions are sources. The observed CO2 fluxes are into the ocean and on the order of 1 micromol m(-2) s(-1) at most. The acetone fluxes measured show a significant relationship with chlorophyll in the region of the phytoplankton bloom. Although the uncertainty is very high due to the very low signal-to-noise ratio, significant positive acetone mean fluxes of the order of 0.01 nmol m(-2) s(-1) have been observed in bloom areas, whereas near zero, negative, or highly variable low acetone fluxes have been measured elsewhere. Based on these results we estimate that the global acetone source from bloom affected areas is small in comparison to the uptake from the much larger oligotrophic regions, and that the ocean is globally a net sink for acetone.
Taddei
Stefano
S
Institute for Biometeorology (IBIMET-CNR), via G. Caproni 8, 50145 Firenze, Italy. s.taddei@ibimet.cnr.it
Toscano
Piero
P
Gioli
Beniamino
B
Matese
Alessandro
A
Miglietta
Franco
F
Vaccari
Francesco P
FP
Zaldei
Alessandro
A
Custer
Thomas
T
Williams
Jonathan
J
D000096:Acetone / Q000032:analysis*; D001267:Atlantic Ocean; D001272:Atmosphere / Q000737:chemistry*; D002245:Carbon Dioxide / Q000032:analysis*; D004784:Environmental Monitoring / Q000379:methods; D012623:Seawater / Q000737:chemistry*; D012767:Ships; D014919:Wind
D000096:Acetone; D002245:Carbon Dioxide