AK Marine Highway System CO2 Monitoring- Alaska Ocean Observing System
Original (non-English) name
Acronym
AK Marine Highway System CO2 Monitoring - AOOS
Citation
Abstract
This project uses the Alaska Marine Highway Service ferry M/V Columbia to track carbon system conditions and variability along the Southeast Alaska and British Columbia coasts. The Columbia operates weekly from Bellingham, WA to Skagway, AK* – a round trip of 1,854 miles – and represents the most spatially expansive ferry-based OA installation in North America.
Onboard, the temperature, salinity, pCO2 (partial pressure of carbon dioxide) and dissolved oxygen of the seawater are measured every 3 minutes using a General Oceanics 8050 pCO2 Measuring System. In addition to the surface seawater data, atmospheric pCO2 is measured from an air intake on the foredeck. The combination of these core measurements, combined with an alkalinity – salinity relationship built from data collected largely using AOOS funding on previous work, will allow tracking of the surface water saturation states of aragonite and calcite, as well as pH and the other CO2 system parameters along the ferry’s transit path.
The project’s mission is to understand present-day conditions with respect to ocean acidification, how levels change seasonally, and where there are hot spots or refugia from corrosive waters. This basic information is important for management of marine resources, and when collected over a long enough time, allows scientists to estimate the rate at which ocean acidification is occurring in near-shore Alaskan waters.