Improving the inverse modeling of a trace isotope: How precisely can radium-228 fluxes toward the ocean and submarine groundwater discharge be estimated?

Guillaume Le Gland, Laurent Mémery, Olivier Aumont, Laure Resplandy

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

13 Scopus citations

Abstract

Radium-228 (228Ra), an almost conservative trace isotope in the ocean, supplied from the continental shelves and removed by a known radioactive decay (T1ĝ•2 Combining double low line 5. 75 years), can be used as a proxy to constrain shelf fluxes of other trace elements, such as nutrients, iron, or rare earth elements. In this study, we perform inverse modeling of a global 228Ra dataset (including GEOSECS, TTO and GEOTRACES programs, and, for the first time, data from the Arctic and around the Kerguelen Islands) to compute the total 228Ra fluxes toward the ocean, using the ocean circulation obtained from the NEMO 3.6 model with a 2° resolution. We optimized the inverse calculation (source regions, cost function) and find a global estimate of the 228Ra fluxes of 8.01-8. 49 × 1023 atomsyr-1, more precise and around 20% lower than previous estimates. The largest fluxes are in the western North Atlantic, the western Pacific and the Indian Ocean, with roughly two-thirds in the Indo-Pacific Basin. An estimate in the Arctic Ocean is provided for the first time (0.43-0.50 × 1023 atomsyr-1). Local misfits between model and data in the Arctic, the Gulf Stream and the Kuroshio regions could result from flaws of the ocean circulation in these regions (resolution, atmospheric forcing). As radium is enriched in groundwater, a large part of the 228Ra shelf sources comes from submarine groundwater discharge (SGD), a major but poorly known pathway for terrestrial mineral elements, including nutrients, to the ocean. In contrast to the 228Ra budget, the global estimate of SGD is rather unconstrained, between 1.3 and 14. 7 × 1013m3yr-1, due to high uncertainties on the other sources of 228Ra, especially diffusion from continental shelf sediments. Better precision on SGD cannot be reached by inverse modeling until a proper way to separate the contributions of SGD and diffusive release from sediments at a global scale is found.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)3171-3189
Number of pages19
JournalBiogeosciences
Volume14
Issue number13
DOIs
StatePublished - Jul 4 2017

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics
  • Earth-Surface Processes

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Improving the inverse modeling of a trace isotope: How precisely can radium-228 fluxes toward the ocean and submarine groundwater discharge be estimated?'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this