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Science 4 November 1988:
Vol. 242. no. 4879, pp. 746 - 749
DOI: 10.1126/science.242.4879.746
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Articles

Arctic Ocean Ventilation Studied with a Suite of Anthropogenic Halocarbon Tracers

M. KRYSELL 1 and D. W. R. WALLACE 2

1 Department of Analytical and Marine Chemistry, Chalmers University of Technology and University of Göteborg, S-412 96, Göteborg, Sweden.
2 Oceanographic Sciences Division, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, NY 11973.

The chlorofluoromethanes (CFMs: CCl2F2 and CCl3F), methyl chloroform (CH3CCl3), and carbon tetrachloride (CCl4) have been measured in deep waters of the Arctic Ocean. Oceanic and atmospheric inventories of these compounds result from known anthropogenic releases; because the CFMs and CCl4 are also chemically nonreactive, they can be used as transient tracers of ocean circulation. The input history of CCl4 is longer than that of any other transient tracer identified to date(sim70 years). This long input history, together with an e-folding time scale of increase(tgr) of sim28 years, makes CCl4 potentially the most useful tracer for calibrating models of the oceanic uptake of the fossil-fuel CO2 transient(tgr ap 25 years). The bottom water of the Nansen Basin, Arctic Ocean, has detectable CCl4 but undetectable CFMs and CH3CCl3, which suggests either that the bottom water is sim50 years old, or that there is a small, nonanthropogenic component of atmospheric CCl4(<6 parts per trillion by volume).

Submitted on May 10, 1988
Accepted on September 2, 1988


THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
An estimate of anthropogenic CO2 inventory from decadal changes in oceanic carbon content.
T. Tanhua, A. Kortzinger, K. Friis, D. W. Waugh, and D. W. R. Wallace (2007)
PNAS 104, 3037-3042
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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)