Summer sea ice melting enhances phytoplankton and dimethyl sulfide production

Abstract

The relationships among sea ice melting, phytoplankton assemblages, and the production of climate-relevant trace gases in the Southern Ocean are gaining increasing attention from the scientific community. This is particularly true for dimethyl sulfide (DMS), which plays an important role in atmospheric chemistry by influencing the formation of sulfated aerosols with radiative impacts and constituting cloud condensation nuclei. In the current study, chlorophyll a (Chl a), DMS and its precursors dimethylsulfoniopropionate (DMSP), were quantified in the Weddell–Scotia Confluence (WSC) during the 2018 record ice extent minimum period. Mixed layer changes were found to be generally associated with spatial variation in sea ice melt, with the depth being six times deeper in ice-free, well-mixed regions than in seasonal ice-melting zones. The surface Chl a concentration increased from ice-free to ice-melting regions with elevated sea ice meltwater percentages and drawdown surface nutrient concentrations. The concentrations of surface and depth-integrated Chl a in the upper 150 m reached maxima in the ice-melting region with the highest fraction of sea ice meltwater, illustrating that sea ice melting promoted the occurrence of phytoplankton blooms. The DMS and DMSP concentrations in the vicinity of the ice-melting zone were approximately three times higher than those in the ice-free waters. The observations of this study show that the regions of ice melting in the WSC were a zone of particularly high sea–air fluxes of DMS, which could significantly contribute to the atmospheric budget of DMS in the polar regions.