Widespread surface water pCO2 undersaturation during ice-melt season in an Arctic continental shelf sea (Hudson Bay, Canada)

Abstract

Estimating sea–air CO2 fluxes in coastal seas remains a source of uncertainty in global carbon budgets because processes like primary production, upwelling, water mixing, and freshwater inputs produce high spatial and temporal variability of CO2 partial pressure (pCO2). As a result, improving our pCO2 baseline observations in these regions is important, especially in sub-Arctic and Arctic seas that are experiencing strong impacts of climate change. Here, we show the patterns and main processes controlling seawater pCO2 and sea–air CO2 fluxes in Hudson Bay during the 2018 spring and early summer seasons. We observed spatially limited pCO2 supersaturation (relative to the atmosphere) near river mouths and beneath sea ice and widespread undersaturated pCO2 in offshore and ice-melt-influenced waters. pCO2 was highly correlated with salinity and temperature, with a limited but statistically significant relationship with chlorophyll a and fluorescent dissolved organic matter. Hudson Bay on average was undersaturated with respect to atmospheric CO2, which we attribute mainly to the dominance of sea-ice meltwater. We calculated an average net CO2 flux of about –5mmol CO2 m–2 day–1 (–3.3 Tg C) during the spring and early summer seasons (92 days). Combining this result with extrapolated estimates for late summer and fall seasons, we estimate the annual CO2 flux of Hudson Bay during the open water season (184 days) to be –7.2 Tg C. Our findings indicate that the bay on average is a weaker CO2 sink than most other Arctic seas, emphasizing the importance of properly accounting for seasonal variability in the Arctic coastal shelves to obtain reliable sea–air CO2 exchange budgets.