Dissolved Barium

Biogeochemical Properties

Dissolved Barium is a type of bio-intermediate element which in general behaves like hard-part nutrients [Chan et al., 1977, Falkner et al., 1993].

Dissolved Barium was first posed as a tracer of Arctic river and halocline water by Falkner et al. [1994]. Then the on-going field measurements in Beaufort Sea, Chukchi Sea, Laptev Sea and Eurasian marginal seas found that North American rivers like Yukon and Mackenzie have dissolved Barium concentration significantly higher than major Eurasian rivers. Therefore, dissolved Barium is able to separate North American runoff from Eurasian runoff. [Guay, 1997, Guay and Falkner, 1997, 1998, Taylor et al., 2003]. Since the ??background?? surface dissolved Barium level in the Arctic Ocean is lower than both Eurasian and North American runoff, dissolved Barium also acts as a proxy of Arctic runoff water in general [Falkner et al., 1994].

Parameterization set-up

To come

Reference

      1. Chan, D. Drummond, J. M. Edmond, and B. Grant. On the Barium data from the Atlantic GEOSECS expedition. Deep Sea Res., 24(7):613?C649, 1977.
      1. Falkner, T. Bowers, J. Todd, B. Lewis, W. Landing, J. Edmond, et al. The behavior of Barium in anoxic marine waters. Geochim. Cosmochim. Acta, 57(3):537?C554, 1993.
  • K. K. Falkner, R. W. MacDonald, E. C. Carmack, and T. Weingartner. The potential of Barium as a tracer of Arctic water masses. In O. M. Johannessen, R. D. Muench, and J. E. Overland, editors, The polar oceans and their role in shaping the global environment, volume 85 of AGU Geophysics Monograph, pages 63?C76. American Geophysical Union, Washington, D.C., 1994.
      1. Guay and K. K. Falkner. Barium as a tracer of Arctic halocline and river waters. Deep Sea Res. Part II: Topical Studies in Oceanography, 44(8):1543?C1569, 1997.
      1. Guay and K. K. Falkner. A survey of dissolved Barium in the estuaries of major Arctic rivers and adjacent seas. Cont. Shelf Res., 18(8):859?C882, 1998.