Barents and Kara Seas oceanographic data base (BarKode)

Oceanographic data collected by ocean research organisations in Russia, the USA, the United Kingdom, Germany, Norway, and Poland for the Barents, Kara and White Seas region are presented in this atlas. Recently declassified naval data from Norway, the USA, and the UK are also included. More than 1,000,000 oceanographic stations containing temperature and/or sea-water salinity data were originally selected. After correcting errors and eliminating duplicates, data from 206,300 checked stations were placed on CD-ROM, together with many figures describing the characteristics of both the single-input and combined data set. In addition, temperature and salinity measurements were interpolated to the following standard horizons: 0, 25, 50, 100, 150, 200, 250, 300 m, and bottom. This atlas covers the 100-year period 1898 to 1998 and is, to date, the most complete oceanographic data collection for these Arctic shelf seas. This data set is complemented by more than 9,000 measurements of sea surface temperature, which were recently digitized from ships' logbooks. They cover the same geographical area within the time period 1867-1912.

Single non-normalized data of electron probe analyses of all glass shard samples from the Seward Peninsula and the Lipari obsidian reference standard

Permafrost degradation influences the morphology, biogeochemical cycling and hydrology of Arctic landscapes over a range of time scales. To reconstruct temporal patterns of early to late Holocene permafrost and thermokarst dynamics, site-specific palaeo-records are needed. Here we present a multi-proxy study of a 350-cm-long permafrost core from a drained lake basin on the northern Seward Peninsula, Alaska, revealing Lateglacial to Holocene thermokarst lake dynamics in a central location of Beringia. Use of radiocarbon dating, micropalaeontology (ostracods and testaceans), sedimentology (grain-size analyses, magnetic susceptibility, tephra analyses), geochemistry (total nitrogen and carbon, total organic carbon, d13Corg) and stable water isotopes (d18O, dD, d excess) of ground ice allowed the reconstruction of several distinct thermokarst lake phases. These include a pre-lacustrine environment at the base of the core characterized by the Devil Mountain Maar tephra (22 800±280 cal. a BP, Unit A), which has vertically subsided in places due to subsequent development of a deep thermokarst lake that initiated around 11 800 cal. a BP (Unit B). At about 9000 cal. a BP this lake transitioned from a stable depositional environment to a very dynamic lake system (Unit C) characterized by fluctuating lake levels, potentially intermediate wetland development, and expansion and erosion of shore deposits. Complete drainage of this lake occurred at 1060 cal. a BP, including post-drainage sediment freezing from the top down to 154 cm and gradual accumulation of terrestrial peat (Unit D), as well as uniform upward talik refreezing. This core-based reconstruction of multiple thermokarst lake generations since 11 800 cal. a BP improves our understanding of the temporal scales of thermokarst lake development from initiation to drainage, demonstrates complex landscape evolution in the ice-rich permafrost regions of Central Beringia during the Lateglacial and Holocene, and enhances our understanding of biogeochemical cycles in thermokarst-affected regions of the Arctic.

Seawater carbonate chemistry and conditions of Mytilus edulis extracellular body fluids and shell composition in a pH-treatment experiment: Acid-base status, trace elements and delta11B, 2012

Mytilus edulis were cultured for 3 months under six different seawater pCO2 levels ranging from 380 to 4000 µatm. Specimen were taken from Kiel Fjord (Western Baltic Sea, Germany) which is a habitat with high and variable seawater pCO2 and related shifts in carbonate system speciation (e.g., low pH and low CaCO3 saturation state). Hemolymph (HL) and extrapallial fluid (EPF) samples were analyzed for pH and total dissolved inorganic carbon (CT) to calculate pCO2 and [HCO3]. A second experiment was conducted for 2 months with three different pCO2 levels (380, 1400 and 4000 µatm). Boron isotopes (delta11B) were investigated by LA-MC-ICP-MS (Laser Ablation-Multicollector-Inductively Coupled Plasma-Mass Spectrometry) in shell portions precipitated during experimental treatment time. Additionally, elemental ratios (B/Ca, Mg/Ca and Sr/Ca) in the EPF of specimen from the second experiment were measured via ICP-OES (Inductively Coupled Plasma-Optical Emission Spectrometry). Extracellular pH was not significantly different in HL and EPF but systematically lower than ambient water pH. This is due to high extracellular pCO2 values, a prerequisite for metabolic CO2 excretion. No accumulation of extracellular [HCO3] was measured. Elemental ratios (B/Ca, Mg/Ca and Sr/Ca) in the EPF increased slightly with pH which is in accordance with increasing growth and calcification rates at higher seawater pH values. Boron isotope ratios were highly variable between different individuals but also within single shells. This corresponds to a high individual variability in fluid B/Ca ratios and may be due to high boron concentrations in the organic parts of the shell. The mean delta11B value shows no trend with pH but appears to represent internal pH (EPF) rather than ambient water pH.