Variability in the Concentration of Lithium in the Indo‐Pacific Ocean
Authors
Prakash, Satya
Publication Date
2022-06Journal Title
Global Biogeochemical Cycles
ISSN
0886-6236
Publisher
American Geophysical Union (AGU)
Volume
36
Issue
6
Language
en
Type
Article
This Version
AO
VoR
Metadata
Show full item recordCitation
Steiner, Z., Landing, W. M., Bohlin, M. S., Greaves, M., Prakash, S., Vinayachandran, P., & Achterberg, E. P. (2022). Variability in the Concentration of Lithium in the Indo‐Pacific Ocean. Global Biogeochemical Cycles, 36 (6) https://doi.org/10.1029/2021gb007184
Description
Funder: MoES, Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services; Id: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100004814
Abstract
Abstract: Lithium has limited biological activity and can readily replace aluminium, magnesium and iron ions in aluminosilicates, making it a proxy for the inorganic silicate cycle and its potential link to the carbon cycle. Data from the North Pacific Ocean, tropical Indian Ocean, Southern Ocean and Red Sea suggest that salinity normalized dissolved lithium concentrations vary by up to 2%–3% in the Indo‐Pacific Ocean. The highest lithium concentrations were measured in surface waters of remote North Pacific and Indian Ocean stations that receive relatively high fluxes of dust. The lowest dissolved lithium concentrations were measured just below the surface mixed layer of the stations with highest surface water concentrations, consistent with removal into freshly forming aluminium rich phases and manganese oxides. In the North Pacific, water from depths >2,000 m is slightly depleted in lithium compared to the initial composition of Antarctic Bottom Water, likely due to uptake of lithium by authigenically forming aluminosilicates. The results of this study suggest that the residence time of lithium in the ocean may be significantly shorter than calculated from riverine and hydrothermal fluxes.
Keywords
BIOGEOSCIENCES, Biogeochemical kinetics and reaction modeling, Biogeochemical cycles, processes, and modeling, Nutrients and nutrient cycling, CRYOSPHERE, Biogeochemistry, GEOCHEMISTRY, Marine geochemistry, GLOBAL CHANGE, OCEANOGRAPHY: BIOLOGICAL AND CHEMICAL, Marine inorganic chemistry, Marine organic chemistry, PALEOCEANOGRAPHY, Research Article, dust, GEOTRACES, North Pacific, Indian Ocean, lithium, Li/Na
Sponsorship
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (458035111)
National Science Foundation USA (0223378)
Identifiers
gbc21303, 2021gb007184
External DOI: https://doi.org/10.1029/2021gb007184
This record's URL: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/338466
Rights
Licence:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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