The impact of sedimentary alkalinity release on the water column CO<sub>2</sub> system in the North Sea

Brenner, H.; Braeckman, U.; Le Guitton, M.; Meysman, F. J. R.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-13-841-2016

Articles | Volume 13, issue 3

https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-13-841-2016

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

https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-13-841-2016

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

Articles | Volume 13, issue 3

Research article

|

12 Feb 2016

Research article |

| 12 Feb 2016

The impact of sedimentary alkalinity release on the water column CO₂ system in the North Sea

H. Brenner, U. Braeckman, M. Le Guitton, and F. J. R. Meysman

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Final revised paper (published on 12 Feb 2016)
Preprint (discussion started on 07 Aug 2015)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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- Supplement

RC C4903: 'Benthic TA flux (and DIC flux) on CO2 uptake from the atmosphere', Wei-Jun Cai, 03 Sep 2015
- AC C7158: 'Response to comments by W-J Cai', Heiko Brenner, 29 Oct 2015
RC C5140: 'Review of "Impact of sedimentary alkalinity release on the water column CO2 system in the North Sea”', Johannes Paetsch, 10 Sep 2015
- AC C7166: 'Response to comments by J. Paetsch', Heiko Brenner, 29 Oct 2015

Peer-review completion

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

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (08 Nov 2015) by Gerhard Herndl

AR by Heiko Brenner on behalf of the Authors (11 Nov 2015) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (15 Nov 2015) by Gerhard Herndl

RR by Johannes Paetsch (27 Nov 2015)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

Overall Statements
The manuscript ”Impact of sedimentary alkalinity release on the water column CO2 system in the North Sea” by H. Brenner, U. Braeckman, M. Le Guitton, and F.J.R. Meysman presents North Sea wide pelagic-benthic fluxes of TA, DIC and O2 in the North Sea. The revised manuscript has been improved but there are still some mistakes in which must be corrected. My hint to compare the results with other papers was followed only partly in the introduction. This should be done in more detail in the discussion part. If, for example, Winde et al 2014 would be taken into account, it would have become clear that the Wadden Sea Alkalinity Export dominated the DIC Export and thus this must be included in the budgets.

Several other detailed points must be clarified before I would suggest publishing the manuscript in BG:

Discuss Spearman’s rank correlation. It is used when normal correlation tests fail. This becomes clear in Figure 6: The reader of such a figure will never have the impression to see a reasonable correlation.

The notation “southern North Sea” or SNS for the region shown in Figure 1 is misleading. All other publications, even maps of the oil-industry limit the SNS at about 54 - 55 degree north.

L205: “)” missing

L281: Say that the correlation TOU rate at 40 RPM vs TOU rate at 80 RPM was performed. This should be before the hint to advective transport.

L317: These numbers differ substantially from the numbers of the previous manuscript. How can that be?

L439 omit “strongly”

L453 one mole DIC per one mole CaCO3

L709 It is misleading to use different numbers when you mean the same value (45.45 vs 45.40 (L695)).

L591 and L612: It’s not per carbon atom but “per mole C in POC”

L715 “,,” -> “,”

L720 ff: How is the pelagic nitrification included?

L729 using an area of 329.230 km2 the 2.33 mmol m-2 d-1 turns into 280 Gmol yr-1

L738 Schwichtenberg (2013) shows that the Alkalinity export strongly dominates the DIC export from the Wadden Sea.

L762 “2.3” -> “2.33”

L775 ff: How is F(out)(DIC) determined? It seems that is the closure term. But this was already F(air).

Figure 1: station 2 and station 7 are interchanged. (See Tab. 1)

Table 4: The month (4) is still wrong for “This Study”

Figure 6: I did not ask for label revising here.

Figure 8: There was no line removed.

Figure 9: dashed line is missing

Referee Report: PDF

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ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (Editor review) (28 Nov 2015) by Gerhard Herndl

AR by Heiko Brenner on behalf of the Authors (15 Jan 2016) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (15 Jan 2016) by Gerhard Herndl

AR by Heiko Brenner on behalf of the Authors (25 Jan 2016)

Short summary

Alkalinity released from sediments of the southern North Sea can play an important role in the carbon cycle of the North Sea by lowering the pCO₂ of the seawater and thus increasing the CO₂ flux between the atmosphere and the water. However, not every single mole alkalinity generated in sediments leads to an additional CO₂ uptake, as certain reactions in the water column can negate the respective alkalinity release.

The impact of sedimentary alkalinity release on the water column CO2 system in the North Sea

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Interactive discussion

Peer-review completion

The impact of sedimentary alkalinity release on the water column CO₂ system in the North Sea