September 2011

On Friday the 23rd of September....

Jeff and Cathy present a description of hydrothermal plume sampling and analysis at the East Scotia Ridge vent sites in the Southern Ocean

On Monday 5th of September....

Jessy Klar will present:

Title:
Dissolved aluminium distributions in the Atlantic Ocean: three study areas

Abstract: While it is well accepted that oceanic primary production (and therefore carbon drawdown) relies on the availability of Fe and other trace metals (such as Zn, Cd, etc) it is important to quantify the sources of these elements to the surface ocean. Aluminium (Al) has no known function within living cells but is a very useful tracer to estimate atmospheric dust deposition, one of the most important input mechanisms of Fe to surface waters of the open ocean.

Here we present dissolved aluminium (dAl) distributions in the open ocean from three different study areas within the Atlantic Ocean. In first place three cruises were conducted in 2010 in the Irminger Basin Iron Study (IBIS) in the High Latitude North Atlantic Ocean (HLNAO). Subsequently, high resolution dAl seawater samples have been collected during two GEOTRACES studies, one in the South Atlantic Ocean (GA10, 2010) and one in the Tropical Atlantic (GA06, 2011).

Dissolved aluminium in seawater was analysed onboard with a Flow Injection method using pre-concentration of Al onto Toyopearl resin (AF-Che-650M) and detection through lumogallion-Al fluorescence (Resing and Measures, 1994; Brown and Bruland, 2008).

The distributions of dAl in these three key areas of the Atlantic Ocean indicate significant differences of supply rates. The analysis of this data should improve our understanding about the ongoing global biogeochemical processes in the ocean.