Measurement of light absorption by chromophoric dissolved organic matter using a type-II liquid capillary waveguide: assessment of an achievable accuracy.

Light absorption by chromophoric dissolved organic matter (CDOM) in the ocean is often measured using liquid waveguide capillary cells coupled to spectral array detectors. This type of optical setup is affected by several sources of uncertainties related to the waveguide and the detector. Uncertainties from the waveguide arise from errors in the effective path length and the effects of water salinity, while errors related to the detector are due to the non-linearity in the response, internal stray light, and wavelength accuracy. Here, uncertainties in the measurements of the spectral absorption coefficient of CDOM due to the optical setup itself were investigated in detail. The related systematic errors were very often significant (2-15%) and larger than expected from simple measurement uncertainty (±1%). However, they can be corrected by characterizing the detector's response for non-linearity and stray light, regularly performing calibrations for the detector's wavelength response, and routinely measuring the waveguide's effective path length. Including such corrections and timely calibrations reduces the uncertainties related to the spectrophotometric measurements to about ±2%. Uncertainties related to the necessary handling of samples are not included here.

Phytoplankton optical fingerprint libraries for development of phytoplankton ocean color satellite products.

Phytoplankton respond to physical and hydrographic forcing on time and space scales up to and including those relevant to climate change. Quantifying changes in phytoplankton communities over these scales is essential for predicting ocean food resources, occurrences of harmful algal blooms, and carbon and other elemental cycles, among other predictions. However, one of the best tools for quantifying phytoplankton communities across relevant time and space scales, ocean color sensors, is constrained by its own spectral capabilities and availability of adequately vetted and relevant optical models. To address this later shortcoming, greater than fifty strains of phytoplankton, from a range of taxonomic lineages, geographic locations, and time in culture, alone and in mixtures, were grown to exponential and/or stationary phase for determination of hyperspectral UV-VIS absorption coefficients, multi-angle and multi-spectral backscatter coefficients, volume scattering functions, particle size distributions, pigment content, and fluorescence. The aim of this publication is to share these measurements to expedite their utilization in the development of new optical models for the next generation of ocean color satellites.

The adsorption of dissolved organic carbon onto glass fiber filters and its effect on the measurement of particulate organic carbon: A laboratory and modeling exercise.

Particulate organic carbon (POC) represents a small portion of total carbon in the ocean. However, it plays a large role in the turnover of organic matter through the biological pump and other processes. Early on since the development of the POC measurement technique in the 1960s, it was known that dissolved organic carbon (DOC) adsorbs and is retained both on and in the filter. That retained DOC is measured as if it was part of the particulate fraction, an artifact that can cause significant overestimates of POC concentration. We set out to address the long-standing question of whether the magnitude of the DOC adsorption is affected by the quantity and quality of the dissolved organic matter in the sample. However, our results precluded an unequivocal answer to that question; nevertheless, the experimental data generated did allow us to develop and test predictive models that relate the mass of carbon adsorbed to the volume of sample filtered. The results indicate that the uptake of DOC can be predicted using an exponential model and that a saturation point is approached when approximately a half-liter of water is filtered. This model can be a valuable tool for correcting existing POC data sets that did not account for DOC adsorption. Nonetheless, this approach should not be regarded as a substitute for collecting in situ filter blanks in parallel with POC samples to prop-erly correct for this artifact.

Dissolved organic carbon fluxes in the Middle Atlantic Bight: An integrated approach based on satellite data and ocean model products.

Continental margins play an important role in global carbon cycle, accounting for 15-21% of the global marine primary production. Since carbon fluxes across continental margins from land to the open ocean are not well constrained, we undertook a study to develop satellite algorithms to retrieve dissolved organic carbon (DOC) and combined these satellite data with physical circulation model products to quantify the shelf boundary fluxes of DOC for the U.S. Middle Atlantic Bight (MAB). Satellite DOC was computed through seasonal relationships of DOC with colored dissolved organic matter absorption coefficients, which were derived from an extensive set of in situ measurements. The multiyear time series of satellite-derived DOC stocks (4.9 Teragrams C; Tg) shows that freshwater discharge influences the magnitude and seasonal variability of DOC on the continental shelf. For the 2010-2012 period studied, the average total estuarine export of DOC into the MAB shelf is 0.77 Tg C yr-1 (year). The integrated DOC tracer fluxes across the shelf boundaries are 12.1 Tg C yr-1 entering the MAB from the southwest alongshore boundary, 18.5 Tg C yr-1 entering the MAB from the northeast alongshore boundary, and 29.0 Tg C yr-1 flowing out of the MAB across the entire length of the 100 m isobath. The magnitude of the cross-shelf DOC flux is quite variable in time (monthly) and space (north to south). The highly dynamic exchange of water along the shelf boundaries regulates the DOC budget of the MAB at subseasonal time scales.