Global dust teleconnections: aerosol iron solubility and stable isotope composition

Matthieu Waeles; Alex R. Baker; Tim Jickells; Jurian Hoogewerff

doi:10.1071/EN07013

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Global dust teleconnections: aerosol iron solubility and stable isotope composition

Matthieu Waeles ^A ^B , Alex R. Baker ^A , Tim Jickells ^A ^E and Jurian Hoogewerff ^C ^D

+ Author Affiliations

- Author Affiliations

^A Laboratory for Global Marine and Atmospheric Chemistry, School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ, UK.

^B Present address: Laboratoire de Chimie Marine, Université de Bretagne Occidentale (IUEM), UMR CNRS 7144 Roscoff, Place Nicolas Copernic, Technopôle Brest-Iroise, F-29280 Plouzané, France.

^C Institute of Food Research, Norwich Research Park, Colney, Norwich NR4 7UA, UK.

^D Present address: School of Chemical Sciences and Pharmacy, University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ, UK.

^E Corresponding author. Email: t.jickells@uea.ac.uk

Environmental Chemistry 4(4) 233-237 https://doi.org/10.1071/EN07013
Submitted: 6 February 2007 Accepted: 21 May 2007 Published: 16 August 2007

Environmental context. Iron is an essential component of many enzyme systems of marine plants (phytoplankton), but in large areas of the global ocean iron is in such short supply as to hinder phytoplankton growth. This is of major environmental interest because phytoplankton growth can remove carbon from the atmosphere. This contribution seeks to improve the understanding of how dust transported through, and processed within, the atmosphere helps to supply usable iron to the plants of the remote ocean.

Abstract. Soil dust mobilised from arid regions is transported through and processed within the atmosphere before deposition to marine and terrestrial ecosystems remote from the source regions. This process represents a significant source of iron to the oceans, which creates feedback loops throughout the Earth’s system. The very limited solubility of iron from dust makes the determination of this solubility, how it varies and how this may influence ocean biogeochemistry of considerable importance. In this short communication we summarise a series of recent studies of mechanisms that control solubility and then consider how these results influence the inputs of iron to the oceans and their isotopic signature.

Additional keywords: aerosols, iron, isotopes, ocean biogeochemistry.

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by NERC grant NER/B/S/2003/00780 and sampling was supported by the AMT programme under NERC grant NER/O/S/2001/00680/01244. We acknowledge Carol Robinson’s leadership of AMT and Andy Rees as PSO of AMT15. This is contribution 155 of the AMT programme. We thank Doug Mackie and J.J. Cao for providing desert soil samples and Joe Prospero for providing the Barbados aerosol samples. We also thank two referees for their helpful comments.

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