POSTER Session 4

AUTONOMOUS SHIP-BASED UNDERWAY MEASUREMENTS OF PARTICULATE INORGANIC CARBON CONCENTRATION IN THE ICELAND BASIN FROM A PIC SENSOR PROTOTYPE

A first prototype of a cross-polarized transmissometer for the measurement of Particulate Inorganic Carbon (PIC) concentration was integrated in a ship-based underway optical flow-through system on board the RRS Discovery in May-June 2024 in the Icelandic Basin. This field campaign was conducted in the frame of the UK-NERC Bio-Carbon program on biological carbon storage, aimed at monitoring the biological carbon pump including observations of biogeochemical processes (primary production, calcification, organic carbon and PIC export, remineralization, and dissolution) and carbon pools (including surface ocean PIC). Here we present first field results obtained with the PIC instrument prototype operated in flow-through mode. We performed pre-deployment calibrations with cultured coccolithophores in the MarSens laboratory at UGent and conducted cross-comparisons with discrete water samples of PIC determined from the ICP-OES technique. We show PIC measurements along the ship track in the Iceland basin in- and outside the annually recurring spring-summer coccolithophore bloom. Further developments are ongoing to make the PIC sensor suitable for vertical profiling on autonomous platforms.

Griet Neukermans, MarSens, Ghent University, Belgium, [email protected], https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8258-3590

Qiming Sun, MarSens, Ghent University, Belgium, [email protected]

Georges Fournier, DRDC Valcartier, Canada, [email protected]

Filip Beunis, Ghent University, Belgium, [email protected]

Chuck Pottsmith, Sequoia Scientific, USA, [email protected]

Catherine Mitchell, Bigelow Laboratory, USA, [email protected]

Farley Miller, Bigelow Laboratory, USA, [email protected]

Alex Poulton, Heriot-Watt University United Kingdom, [email protected]

David McKee, Strathclyde University, United Kingdom, [email protected]

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