Concentration maxima of volatile organic iodine compounds in the bottom  layer water and the cold, dense water over the Chukchi Sea in the western  Arctic Ocean: a possibility of production related to the degradation of  organic matter

Ooki, A.; Kawasaki, S.; Kuma, K.; Nishino, S.; Kikuchi, T.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-13-133-2016

Articles | Volume 13, issue 1

https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-13-133-2016

© Author(s) 2016. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Special issue:

Catastrophic reduction of sea ice in the Arctic Ocean...

https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-13-133-2016

© Author(s) 2016. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Articles | Volume 13, issue 1

Research article

|

15 Jan 2016

Research article |

| 15 Jan 2016

Concentration maxima of volatile organic iodine compounds in the bottom layer water and the cold, dense water over the Chukchi Sea in the western Arctic Ocean: a possibility of production related to the degradation of organic matter

A. Ooki, S. Kawasaki, K. Kuma, S. Nishino, and T. Kikuchi

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Final revised paper (published on 15 Jan 2016)
Preprint (discussion started on 17 Jul 2015)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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RC C4340: 'Review of Ooki et al.', Anonymous Referee #1, 14 Aug 2015
- AC C4531: 'Reply to comments', Atsushi Ooki, 21 Aug 2015
RC C5971: 'Comments', Anonymous Referee #2, 01 Oct 2015
- AC C6241: 'Response to the comments (Referee#2)', Atsushi Ooki, 06 Oct 2015

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (Editor review) (04 Nov 2015) by M. Yamamoto-Kawai

Dear Author,

Thank you for submitting your paper. Studying the comments from reviewers and your reply to them, I find this manuscript can be accepted for publication after minor revision. When revising the manuscript, please also consider following suggestions from the editor. A thorough English language review by a professional editor is required before submitting the revised version of the manuscript.

Best regards,
Michiyo Yamamoto-Kawai, Associate Editor

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P11248 L9-10: “The Bering and Chukchi Sea shelves in the western Arctic Ocean, which are among the largest continental shelves in the world, are known to have….” -> “The Chukchi Sea shelf is one of the largest continental shelf in the world and has high biological productivity (e.g…..).” to simplify the sentence.

P11248 L20-25: Delete the sentence “The surface mixed layer in the Arctic Ocean has a seasonally……runoff.” because this is repeated in the next sentence “In the Canada basin, the surface mixed layer has a seasonally ……runoff,“.

P11248 L25: Delete “covering the surface layer” as PMLW was just explained in the previous sentence as “surface mixed layer”.

P11248 L25: It is not clear how the PMLW in the Canada Basin “contributes to sea ice formation”. Is it because of stratification? If so, I do not find why it is mentioned here. Please clarify the meaning of this sentence.

P11248 L26-29: The definition of CDW. Is this (T -1.7 to -1.0 and S>31.8) from Anderson et al. (2013)? I do not find the word “CDW” or its definition in the Anderson’s paper.

P11249 L8-9: “We also attempted to find a clue that will help explain….”-> We also compare VOIs with nutrients and Chl a and discuss possible processes to produce VOIs in seawater.”

P11249 L18: “general description of the R/V Mirai” -> “general information of the R/V Mirai cruise”?

P11251 L07-18: N deficit is due to denitrification, which is a part of decomposition of the organic matter. “influence of organic matter decomposition in the sediment over the shelf” -> “influence of denitrification in shelf sediments”

P11252 station numbers. “St 78-80” -> “St 78 and 80”, same for other station numbers on this page.

P11252 L20-24: Same as above. St 1-70 usually indicates stations from 1 to 70. If it is too many stations to list in the text, just refer to Table 2.
Also, name of the area should be the same as defined in Table 2. “southern Chukchi shelf”, not “southern Chukchi area”.
“In the present study, the southern Chukchi Sea area (St1-74) was…….area (74N).”
-> “In the present study, we divided our study area into three groups: Southern Chukchi slope, Central Chukchi shelf-slope, and Northern slope-basin, defined as area between Bering Strait and 71N, 71N and 74N and north of 74N, respectively (Table 2).”

Section 3. “We regard any X…X as “high” in the western Arctic Ocean”.
In response to reviewer’s comment, authors are revising the text to “We set average concentrations of …..to threshlold values of each compound. We use the terms of “high” and “low” as “higher than the threshold…”.
I think the word “threshold” is not correct. It is just an average. Authors do not need to set any “threshold” or define “high” and “low”, but can simply mention “concentrations higher than the average were observed…..” in the text and “concentrations higher than the average are denoted in bold” in the footnote of tables. Please do not repeat “We regard any….” or “We set threshold…..”. for all parameters.

P11255 L3: “N** minima (or N-deficit minima)” If N** has to be mentioned here, its definition and explanation is needed.

Figures 2 and 3: X-axis for N-deficit should be negative according to the equation in the text.

P11257 L27: CH2I2-> CH2ClI?

P11258 L14: two plots->two data points

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AR by Atsushi Ooki on behalf of the Authors (18 Nov 2015) Manuscript

ED: Publish subject to technical corrections (03 Dec 2015) by M. Yamamoto-Kawai

AR by Atsushi Ooki on behalf of the Authors (07 Dec 2015) Author's response Manuscript

Short summary

We conducted a shipboard observation over the Chukchi Sea and the Canada Basin in the western Arctic Ocean to obtain vertical distributions of four volatile organic iodine compounds (VOIs) in seawater. High concentrations of four VOIs were found in the bottom layer water over the Chukchi Sea shelf, in which layer the concentration maximum of ammonium occurred simultaneously. We considered that the VOI production is associated with degradation of organic matter in the bottom sediment.