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River inflow affects the spatiotemporal variability of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the water column of lakes and may locally influence CO2 gas exchange with the atmosphere. However, spatiotemporal CO2 variability at river inflow sites is often unknown leaving estimates of lake-wide CO2 emission uncertain. Here, we investigated the CO2 concentration and flux variability along a river-impacted bay and remote sampling locations of Lake Onego. During 3 years, we resolved spatial CO2 gradients between river inflow and central lake and recorded the temporal course of CO2 in the bay from the ice-covered period to early summer. We found that the river had a major influence on the spatial CO2 variability during ice-covered periods and contributed similar to 35% to the total amount of CO2 in the bay. The bay was a source of CO2 to the atmosphere at ice-melt each year emitting 2-15 times the amount as an equally sized area in the central lake. However, there was large interannual variability in the spring CO2 emission from the bay related to differences in discharge and climate that affected the hydrodynamic development of the lake during spring. In early summer, the spatial CO2 variability was unrelated to the river signal but correlated negatively with dissolved oxygen concentrations instead indicating a stronger biological control on CO2. Our study reveals a large variability of CO2 and its drivers at river inflow sites at the seasonal and at the interannual time scale. Understanding these dynamics is essential for predicting lake-wide CO2 fluxes more accurately under a warming climate.

In this “Grand Challenges” paper, we review how the carbon isotopic composition of atmospheric CO2 has changed since the Industrial Revolution due to human activities and their influence on the natural carbon cycle, and we provide new estimates of possible future changes for a range of scenarios. Emissions of CO2 from fossil fuel combustion and land use change reduce the ratio of 13C/12C in atmospheric CO2 (δ13CO2). This is because 12C is preferentially assimilated during photosynthesis and δ13C in plant-derived carbon in terrestrial ecosystems and fossil fuels is lower than atmospheric δ13CO2. Emissions of CO2 from fossil fuel combustion also reduce the ratio of 14C/C in atmospheric CO2 (Δ14CO2) because 14C is absent in million-year-old fossil fuels, which have been stored for much longer than the radioactive decay time of 14C. Atmospheric Δ14CO2 rapidly increased in the 1950s to 1960s because of 14C produced during nuclear bomb testing. The resulting trends in δ13C and Δ14C in atmospheric CO2 are influenced not only by these human emissions but also by natural carbon exchanges that mix carbon between the atmosphere and ocean and terrestrial ecosystems. This mixing caused Δ14CO2 to return toward preindustrial levels in the first few decades after the spike from nuclear testing. More recently, as the bomb 14C excess is now mostly well mixed with the decadally overturning carbon reservoirs, fossil fuel emissions have become the main factor driving further decreases in atmospheric Δ14CO2. For δ13CO2, in addition to exchanges between reservoirs, the extent to which 12C is preferentially assimilated during photosynthesis appears to have increased, slowing down the recent δ13CO2 trend slightly. A new compilation of ice core and flask δ13CO2 observations indicates that the decline in δ13CO2 since the preindustrial period is less than some prior estimates, which may have incorporated artifacts owing to offsets from different laboratories' measurements. Atmospheric observations of δ13CO2 have been used to investigate carbon fluxes and the functioning of plants, and they are used for comparison with δ13C in other materials such as tree rings. Atmospheric observations of Δ14CO2 have been used to quantify the rate of air-sea gas exchange and ocean circulation, and the rate of net primary production and the turnover time of carbon in plant material and soils. Atmospheric observations of Δ14CO2 are also used for comparison with Δ14C in other materials in many fields such as archaeology, forensics, and physiology. Another major application is the assessment of regional emissions of CO2 from fossil fuel combustion using Δ14CO2 observations and models. In the future, δ13CO2 and Δ14CO2 will continue to change. The sign and magnitude of the changes are mainly determined by global fossil fuel emissions. We present here simulations of future δ13CO2 and Δ14CO2 for six scenarios based on the shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs) from the 6th Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6). Applications using atmospheric δ13CO2 and Δ14CO2 observations in carbon cycle science and many other fields will be affected by these future changes. We recommend an increased effort toward making coordinated measurements of δ13C and Δ14C across the Earth System and for further development of isotopic modeling and model-data analysis tools. ©2020. American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved.

Ground-based atmospheric observations of CO2, δ(O2∕N2), N2O, and CH4 were used to make estimates of the air–sea fluxes of these species from the Lüderitz and Walvis Bay upwelling cells in the northern Benguela region, during upwelling events. Average flux densities (±1σ) were 0.65±0.4 µmol m−2 s−1 for CO2, -5.1±2.5 µmol m−2 s−1 for O2 (as APO), 0.61±0.5 nmol m−2 s−1 for N2O, and 4.8±6.3 nmol m−2 s−1 for CH4. A comparison of our top-down (i.e., inferred from atmospheric anomalies) flux estimates with shipboard-based measurements showed that the two approaches agreed within ±55 % on average, though the degree of agreement varied by species and was best for CO2. Since the top-down method overestimated the flux density relative to the shipboard-based approach for all species, we also present flux density estimates that have been tuned to best match the shipboard fluxes. During the study, upwelling events were sources of CO2, N2O, and CH4 to the atmosphere. N2O fluxes were fairly low, in accordance with previous work suggesting that the evasion of this gas from the Benguela is smaller than for other eastern boundary upwelling systems (EBUS). Conversely, CH4 release was quite high for the marine environment, a result that supports studies that indicated a large sedimentary source of CH4 in the Walvis Bay area. These results demonstrate the suitability of atmospheric time series for characterizing the temporal variability of upwelling events and their influence on the overall marine greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the northern Benguela region.

International audience; Gas exchange across the air–water interface is a key process determining the release of greenhouse gases from surface waters and a fundamental component of gas dynamics in aquatic systems. To experimentally quantify the gas transfer velocity in a wide range of aquatic settings, a novel method based on recently developed techniques for the in situ, near-continuous measurement of dissolved (noble) gases with a field portable mass spectrometer is presented. Variations in observed dissolved gas concentrations are damped and lagged with respect to equilibrium concentrations, being the result of (a) temperature (and thus solubility) variations, (b) water depth, and (c) the specific gas transfer velocity (ki). The method fits a model to the measured gas concentrations to derive the gas transfer velocity from the amplitude and the phase lag between observed and equilibrium concentrations. With the current experimental setup, the method is sensitive to gas transfer velocities of 0.05–9 m/day (for N2), at a water depth of 1 m, and a given daily water temperature variation of 10 °C. Experiments were performed (a) in a controlled experiment to prove the concept and to confirm the capability to determine low transfer velocities and (b) in a field study in a shallow coastal lagoon covering a range of transfer velocities, demonstrating the field applicability of the method.

Shallow lakes are a key component of the global carbon cycle. It is, therefore, important to know how shallow lake ecosystems will respond to the current climate change. Global warming affects not only average temperatures, but also the frequency of heat waves (HW). The impact of extreme events on ecosystems processes, particularly greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, is uncertain. Using the world's longest-running shallow lake experiment, we studied the effects of a simulated summer HW on the fluxes of carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O). The experimental mesocosms had been exposed to different temperature treatments and nutrient loading for 11years prior to the artificial HW. In general, there was an increase in total GHG emissions during the 1-month artificial HW, with a significant increase in CO2, CH4 and N2O being observed in the shallow lake mesocosms. No significant effect of the HW on CO2 emissions could be traced, though, in the mesocosms with high nutrient levels. Furthermore, the data suggested that in addition to the direct effect of increased temperature on metabolic processes during the HW, biotic interactions exerted a significant control of GHG emissions. For example, at low nutrient levels, increased CO2 emissions were associated with low macrophyte abundance, whereas at high nutrient levels, decreased phytoplankton abundance was linked to increased emissions of CO2 and CH4. In contrast to the observable heat-wave effect, no clear general effect of the long-term temperature treatments could be discerned over the summer, likely because the potential effects of the moderate temperature increase, applied as a press disturbance, were overridden by biotic interactions. This study demonstrates that the role of biotic interactions needs to be considered within the context of global warming on ecosystem processes.

Surfactants are ubiquitous in the global oceans: they help form the materially‐distinct sea surface microlayer (SML) across which global ocean‐atmosphere exchanges take place, and they reside on the surfaces of bubbles and whitecap foam cells prolonging their lifetime thus altering ocean albedo. Despite their importance, the occurrence, spatial distribution, and composition of surfactants within the upper ocean and the SML remains under‐characterized during conditions of vigorous wave breaking when in‐situ sampling methods are difficult to implement. Additionally, no quantitative framework exists to evaluate the importance of surfactant activity on ocean whitecap foam coverage estimates. Here we use individual laboratory breaking waves generated in filtered seawater and seawater with added soluble surfactant to identify the imprint of surfactant activity in whitecap foam evolution. The data show a distinct surfactant imprint in the decay phase of foam evolution. The area‐time‐integral of foam evolution is used to develop a time‐varying stabilization function, urn:x-wiley:21699275:media:jgrc22369:jgrc22369-math-0001 and a stabilization factor, urn:x-wiley:21699275:media:jgrc22369:jgrc22369-math-0002, which can be used to identify and quantify the extent of this surfactant imprint for individual breaking waves. The approach is then applied to wind‐driven oceanic whitecaps, and the laboratory and ocean urn:x-wiley:21699275:media:jgrc22369:jgrc22369-math-0003 distributions overlap. It is proposed that whitecap foam evolution may be used to determine the occurrence and extent of oceanic surfactant activity to complement traditional in‐situ techniques and extend measurement capabilities to more severe sea states occurring at wind speeds in excess of about 10 m/s. The analysis procedure also provides a framework to assess surfactant‐driven variability within and between whitecap coverage data sets.

[1] Since the 1980s, a dramatic downward trend in North African dustiness and transport to the tropical Atlantic Ocean has been observed by different data sets and methods. The precise causes of this trend have previously been difficult to understand, partly due to the sparse observational record. Here we show that a decrease in surface wind speeds associated with increased roughness due to more vegetation in the Sahel is the most likely cause of the observed drop in dust emission. Associated changes in turbulence and evapotranspiration, and changes in large-scale circulation, are secondary contributors. Past work has tried to explain negative correlations between North African dust and precipitation through impacts on emission thresholds due to changes in soil moisture and vegetation cover. The use of novel diagnostic tools applied here to long-term surface observations suggests that this is not the dominating effect. Our results are consistent with a recently observed global decrease in surface wind speed, known as “stilling”, and demonstrate the importance of representing vegetation-related roughness changes in models. They also offer a new mechanism of how land-use change and agriculture can impact the Sahelian climate. Citation: Cowie, S. M., P. Knippertz, and J. H. Marsham (2013), Are vegetation-related roughness changes the cause of the recent decrease in dust emission from the Sahel?, Geophys. Res. Lett., 40, 1868–1872, doi:10.1002/grl.50273

Ammonia (NH3) emission from animal manure contributes to air pollution and ecosystem degradation, and the loss of reactive nitrogen (N) from agricultural systems. Estimates of NH3 emission are necessary for national inventories and nutrient management, and NH3 emission from field-applied manure has been measured in many studies over the past few decades. In this work, we facilitate the use of these data by collecting and organizing them in the ALFAM2 database. In this paper we describe the development of the database and summarise its contents, quantify effects of application methods and other variables on emission using a data subset, and discuss challenges for data analysis and model development. The database contains measurements of emission, manure and soil properties, weather, application technique, and other variables for 1895 plots from 22 research institutes in 12 countries. Data on five manure types (cattle, pig, mink, poultry, mixed, as well as sludge and “other”) applied to three types of crops (grass, small grains, maize, as well as stubble and bare soil) are included. Application methods represented in the database include broadcast, trailing hose, trailing shoe (narrow band application), and open slot injection. Cattle manure application to grassland was the most common combination, and analysis of this subset (with dry matter (DM) limited to

Relationships were developed to predict ammonia (NH3) nitrogen losses from cattle manure in animal housing, during manure storage, following field application, and during grazing. Ammonia loss in each phase was predicted using a mechanistic model for NH3 volatilized from the surface of an aqueous solution of ammonium where the NH3 is transported to the free atmosphere through a pathway with finite resistance. Ammonia emission rate was a function of the ammoniacal N content in the manure, ambient temperature, manure pH, manure moisture content, and the exposed manure surface area. Model relationships were calibrated by selecting values for the resistance to NH3 transport for the various loss pathways, which predicted daily and annual emissions similar to those reported in published studies. In further evaluation, these calibrated relationships predicted average annual losses similar to those documented in previous work over a range in climate locations. These relationships were integrated into a whole-farm simulation model to provide a tool for evaluating and comparing long-term nitrogen losses along with other performance, environmental, and economic aspects of farm production. Whole-farm simulations illustrated that the use of a free stall barn, bottom-loaded slurry storage, and direct injection of manure into the soil reduced NH3 emissions by 33% to 50% compared to other commonly used dairy housing and manure handling systems in the northeastern U.S. The improvement in nitrogen utilization more than offset the increased cost in manure handling, providing a small increase in farm profit. The farm model provides a research and teaching tool for evaluating and comparing the economic and environmental sustainability of dairy and beef production systems.

A new sea spray source function (SSSF), termed Oceanflux Sea Spray Aerosol or OSSA, was derived based on in-situ sea spray aerosol measurements along with meteorological/physical parameters. Submicron sea spray aerosol fluxes derived from particle number concentration measurements at the Mace Head coastal station, on the west coast of Ireland, were used together with open-ocean eddy correlation flux measurements from the Eastern Atlantic Sea Spray, Gas Flux, and Whitecap (SEASAW) project cruise. In the overlapping size range, the data for Mace Head and SEASAW were found to be in a good agreement, which allowed deriving the new SSSF from the combined dataset spanning the dry diameter range from 15 nm to 6 μm. The OSSA source function has been parameterized in terms of five lognormal modes and the Reynolds number instead of the more commonly used wind speed, thereby encapsulating important influences of wave height, wind history, friction velocity, and viscosity. This formulation accounts for the different flux relationships associated with rising and waning wind speeds since these are included in the Reynolds number. Furthermore, the Reynolds number incorporates the kinematic viscosity of water, thus the SSSF inherently includes dependences on sea surface temperature and salinity. The temperature dependence of the resulting SSSF is similar to that of other in-situ derived source functions and results in lower production fluxes for cold waters and enhanced fluxes from warm waters as compared with SSSF formulations that do not include temperature effects.

Simultaneous measurements of near-surface aerosol (0.12 < R < 9.25 μm) and bubble spectra (13 < R < 620 μm) were made during five buoy deployments in the open ocean of the North Atlantic and used to estimate aerosol fluxes per unit area of whitecap. The measurements were made during two cruises as part of the Sea Spray, Gas Flux, and Whitecaps (SEASAW) project, a UK contribution to the international Surface Ocean Lower Atmosphere Study (SOLAS) program. The mean bubble number concentrations for each deployment are in broad agreement with other open ocean spectra and are consistently one to two orders of magnitude lower than surf zone studies. Production fluxes per unit area of whitecap are estimated from the mean aerosol concentration for each buoy deployment. They are found to increase with wind speed, and span the range of values found by previous laboratory and surf-zone studies for particles with radius at 80% relative humidity, R80 < 1 μm, but to drop off more rapidly with increasing particle size for larger particles. Estimates of the mean sea spray flux were made by scaling the whitecap production fluxes with in situ estimates of whitecap fraction. The sea spray fluxes are also compared with simultaneous individual eddy covariance flux estimates, and with a sea spray source function derived from them.

Climate change and changing nutrient loadings are the two main aspects of global change that are linked to the increase in the prevalence of coastal hypoxia – the depletion of oxygen in the bottom waters of coastal areas. However, it remains uncertain how strongly these two drivers will each increase the risk of hypoxia over the next decades. Through model simulations we have investigated the relative influence of climate change and nutrient run-off on the bottom water oxygen dynamics in the Oyster Grounds, an area in the central North Sea experiencing summer stratification. Simulations were performed with a one-dimensional ecosystem model that couples hydrodynamics, pelagic biogeochemistry and sediment diagenesis. Climatological conditions for the North Sea over the next 100 yr were derived from a global-scale climate model. Our results indicate that changing climatological conditions will increase the risk of hypoxia. The bottom water oxygen concentration in late summer is predicted to decrease by 24 μM or 11.5% in the year 2100. More intense stratification is the dominant factor responsible for this decrease (58%), followed by the reduced solubility of oxygen at higher water temperature (27%), while the remaining part could be attributed to enhanced metabolic rates in warmer bottom waters (15%). Relative to these climate change effects, changes in nutrient runoff are also important and may even have a stronger impact on the bottom water oxygenation. Decreased nutrient loadings strongly decrease the probability of hypoxic events. This stresses the importance of continued eutrophication management in coastal areas, which could function as a mitigation tool to counteract the effects of rising temperatures.

[1] We simulate the generation and microphysical evolution of sea-salt aerosol using a climatologically driven 3-D microphysical model for the year 2006. We then apply Mie theory to calculate the extinction and scattering efficiencies of our transported, size-resolved sea-salt aerosol, accounting for hygroscopic growth due to changes in ambient relative humidity. We calculate the column optical thickness of our modeled sea-salt aerosol for comparison to three previously published wind speed–dependent clean marine air optical thickness formulations. Variously derived from optical thickness measurements and retrievals taken from the Midway Island AERONET site, the satellite-based MODIS instruments, and the Global Atmospheric Watch (GAW) site at Mace Head, Ireland, the three formulations report similar background levels of clean marine AOT at zero wind speed but significantly different functional dependencies for nonzero wind speeds. We find that our modeled sea-salt aerosol optical thickness very closely depends on the square of surface wind speed under steady state conditions. This relationship is consistent across all latitudes. However, due to the fact that steady state winds are seldom maintained, the 24 h mean wind is more frequently applicable to calculations of sea-salt AOT, with only slightly diminished accuracy.

As part of the U. K. contribution to the international Surface Ocean-Lower Atmosphere Study, a series of three related projects-DOGEE, SEASAW, and HiWASE-undertook experimental studies of the processes controlling the physical exchange of gases and sea spray aerosol at the sea surface. The studies share a common goal: to reduce the high degree of uncertainty in current parameterization schemes. The wide variety of measurements made during the studies, which incorporated tracer and surfactant release experiments, included direct eddy correlation fluxes, detailed wave spectra, wind history, photographic retrievals of whitecap fraction, aerosol-size spectra and composition, surfactant concentration, and bubble populations in the ocean mixed layer. Measurements were made during three cruises in the northeast Atlantic on the RRS Discovery during 2006 and 2007; a fourth campaign has been making continuous measurements on the Norwegian weather ship Polarfront since September 2006. This paper provides an overview of the three projects and some of the highlights of the measurement campaigns.

[1] Gas transfer rates were determined from relaxed eddy accumulation ( REA) measurements of the flux of dimethylsulfide (DMS) over the northeastern Pacific Ocean. This first application of the REA technique for the measurement of DMS fluxes over the open ocean produced estimates of the gas transfer rate that are on average higher than those calculated from commonly used parameterizations. The relationship between the total gas transfer rate and wind speed was found to be gas k(gas) = 0.53 (+/-0.05) U-10(2). Because of the effect of the airside resistance, the waterside transfer rate was up to 16% higher than kgas. Removal of the airside transfer component from the total transfer rate resulted in a relation between wind speed and waterside transfer of k(660) = 0.61 (+/-0.06) U-10(2). However, DMS fluxes showed a high degree of scatter that could not readily be accounted for by wind speed and atmospheric stability. It has to be concluded that these measurements do not permit an accurate parameterization of gas transfer as a function of wind speed.

We quantify seasonal changes in the maintenance energy requirements of Red Knots (Calidris canutus islandica). This subspecies breeds on the tundra of northeast Canada and north Greenland, migrates through Iceland and spends the winter in the coastal regions of western Europe. Maintenance Metabolism (Mmaint) is defined as Basal Metabolic Rate plus extra costs for thermoregulation at environmental temperatures below the thermoneutral zone. Mmaint of Red Knots resting in different microhabitats was estimated on the basis of measurements with heated taxidermic mounts, which were calibrated with forced convection against postabsorptive live birds resting over a range of air temperatures (i.e., against their Standard Metabolic Rate). Based on a physically realistic regression model for heat loss, we established the relationships between the electric power consumption of the mounts and three critical weather variables affecting dry heat loss: air temperature, wind speed and global solar radiation. Observations of Red Knots' use of different microhabitats (including their occurrence in flocks of different bird density) and orientation into the wind were collected on the wintering and on the breeding grounds. At lower standard operative temperatures on the coastal wintering grounds they foraged in tighter flocks and more often faced into the wind, saving 8% compared to solitary birds standing with their flanks exposed. We then used (1) microhabitat-specific equations, (2) long-term meterological data sets, and (3) estimates of habitat use and wind orientation of free-living Red Knots at the different locations and times of the year, to reconstruct the seasonal patterns in Mmaint in the field. Average predicted Mmaint varied between 2.93 W in January and 1.64 W in August on the Dutch wintering areas. The maximum monthly Mmaint in winter was higher than that reached on the Canadian breeding grounds (2.28 W, or 0.78 times the Dutch January cost) and on the Icelandic staging grounds (2.27 W, or 0.77× the Dutch cost in January, in spring, and 1.98 W, or 0.68×, in fall). Based on 31 years of weather data from the Dutch Wadden Sea in the period 1960-1991 (assuming that Red Knots have not changed their behavior), the long-term overwinter average of Mmaint was 2.57 W, with an average monthly minimum of 1.87 W and a maximum of 3.05 W. The west-central coast of France, 900 km more to the south, offers energetically cheaper conditions (0.76× values for the Dutch coast in January) in the nonbreeding season than the Wadden Sea. If islandica knots moved on to West Africa during the nonbreeding season they would incur a saving of 1.13 W on Mmaint, and pay an extra 0.13-0.22 W to cover the cost of travel.