Carbon dissolved in Arctic rivers affects our world -- here's how to
study it

Date:
October 12, 2021
Source:
University of Massachusetts Amherst
Summary:
Scientists have made significant gains in filling out our
understanding of the Arctic's carbon cycle -- or the way that carbon
is transferred between the land, ocean and atmosphere. In order
to better understand future trends in atmospheric carbon dioxide,
and its associated global warming, we need a fuller picture of
how carbon cycles between reservoirs in our world.



FULL STORY ==========================================================================
In a pair of recently published papers, Michael Rawlins, a professor
in the University of Massachusetts Amherst's geosciences department
and associate director of the Climate System Research Center, has made significant gains in filling out our understanding of the Arctic's
carbon cycle -- or the way that carbon is transferred between the land,
ocean and atmosphere. In order to better understand future trends in atmospheric carbon dioxide, and its associated global warming, we need
a fuller picture of how carbon cycles between reservoirs in our world.


========================================================================== "There's been a lot of research that has looked at the vertical flow of
carbon from land to the atmosphere," says Rawlins. This vertical flow
includes things like burning fossil fuels, forest fires, leaking methane
gas and emissions from thawing permafrost. But there's another part of
the cycle -- the horizontal.

"Far less attention has been paid to how carbon is transferred from land
to the ocean via rivers," says Rawlins.

As water flows over the land, into streams and rivers, it picks
up carbon, eventually carrying it all the way to the sea. A small,
but not insignificant amount of this dissolved organic carbon (DOC) is "out-gassed" from the river water and into the atmosphere as a greenhouse
gas. What remains flows into the ocean, where it becomes a key part of
coastal foodwebs.

Yet, we know relatively little about this ocean-ward, lateral flows of
carbon - - especially in the Arctic, where measurements are sparse and
where rapid warming is leading to intensification of the hydrological
cycle, increased runoff and permafrost thaw.

This is where Rawlins's two papers, published in the Journal of
Geophysical Research and Environmental Research Letters, come in.

Rawlins and his co-authors have modified a numerical model that
accurately captures the seasonal accumulation of snow, as well as the
freezing and thawing of soils, by adding an accounting of the production, decomposition, storage and "loading" of DOC to streams and rivers. The
model now simulates the amount of carbon running off into the region's
rivers with startling accuracy. It's the first model to capture the
seasonal variation in the amount of DOC exported to the ocean, a marked east-west gradient across 24 drainage basins on the North Slope of
Alaska and the relatively equal amounts of DOC flowing through north-
draining rivers and through west-draining ones.

Perhaps most importantly, the model points to rising amounts of freshwater
and DOC exported to a coastal lagoon in Northwest Alaska. The year 2019 particularly stands out, with a massive freshwater export of DOC that was nearly three times the amount exported during the early 1980s. "Increased freshwater export has implications for salinity and other components of
the lagoon aquatic environment," says Rawlins. The changes are linked
to increasing precipitation, particularly during the summer, and the
effects of warming and thawing soils. "The largest freshwater and DOC increases," says Rawlins, "occur in Autumn, which is not surprising
given the significant losses in sea ice across the nearby Beaufort and
Chukchi Seas, in turn connected to our warming climate." Ultimately,
this new model can help scientists to refine carbon baselines and better understand how global warming is altering the Earth's carbon cycle.

This research was supported by the US Department of Energy, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the National Science Foundation,
and is affiliated with DOE's Next-Generation Ecosystem Experiments-Arctic project (NGEE-Arctic), NASA's Arctic Boreal Vulnerability Experiment
(ABoVE) and the NSF-supported Beaufort Lagoons Ecosystems Long-Term
Ecological Research project (BLE-LTER).

========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by
University_of_Massachusetts_Amherst. Note: Content may be edited for
style and length.


========================================================================== Journal References:
1. Michael A Rawlins. Increasing freshwater and dissolved organic
carbon
flows to Northwest Alaska's Elson lagoon. Environmental Research
Letters, 2021; 16 (10): 105014 DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/ac2288
2. Michael A. Rawlins, Craig T. Connolly, James W. McClelland. Modeling
Terrestrial Dissolved Organic Carbon Loading to Western Arctic
Rivers.

Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences, 2021; DOI:
10.1029/ 2021JG006420 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/10/211012080115.htm

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