Lateral organic carbon supply to the deep Canada Basin

Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2008. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Geophysical Research Letters 35 (2008): L11607, doi:10.1029/2008GL034271.Understanding the processes driving the carbon cycle in the Arctic Ocean is important for assessing the impacts of the predicted rapid and amplified climate change in this region. We analyzed settling particle samples intercepted by a time-series sediment trap deployed in the abyssal Canada Basin (at 3067 m) in order to examine carbon export to the deep Arctic Ocean. Strikingly old radiocarbon ages (apparent mean 14C age = ∼1900 years) of the organic carbon, abundant lithogenic material (∼80%), and mass flux variations temporally decoupled from the cycle of primary productivity in overlying surface waters together suggest that, unlike other ocean basins, the majority of the particulate organic carbon entering the deep Canada Basin is supplied from the surrounding margins.This research was funded by the NSF Ocean Sciences Division (Chemical Oceanography program) and NSF Office of Polar Programs, Office of Naval Research, as well as the Ocean and Climate Change Institute and Arctic Research Initiative at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution