Discovery and characterization of submarine groundwater discharge in the Siberian Arctic seas: a case study in the Buor-Khaya Gulf, Laptev Sea

• Published in: The Cryosphere
• Main Authors: A. N. Charkin, M. Rutgers van der Loeff, N. E. Shakhova, Ö. Gustafsson, O. V. Dudarev, M. S. Cherepnev, A. N. Salyuk, A. V. Koshurnikov, E. A. Spivak, A. Y. Gunar, A. S. Ruban, I. P. Semiletov
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Copernicus Publications 2017-10-01
• Online Access: https://www.the-cryosphere.net/11/2305/2017/tc-11-2305-2017.pdf
• ISSN: 1994-0416; 1994-0424

It has been suggested that increasing terrestrial water discharge to the Arctic Ocean may partly occur as submarine groundwater discharge (SGD), yet there are no direct observations of this phenomenon in the Arctic shelf seas. This study tests the hypothesis that SGD does exist in the Siberian Arctic Shelf seas, but its dynamics may be largely controlled by complicated geocryological conditions such as permafrost. The field-observational approach in the southeastern Laptev Sea used a combination of hydrological (temperature, salinity), geological (bottom sediment drilling, geoelectric surveys), and geochemical (²²⁴Ra, ²²³Ra, ²²⁸Ra, and ²²⁶Ra) techniques. Active SGD was documented in the vicinity of the Lena River delta with two different operational modes. In the first system, groundwater discharges through tectonogenic permafrost talik zones was registered in both winter and summer. The second SGD mechanism was cryogenic squeezing out of brine and water-soluble salts detected on the periphery of ice hummocks in the winter. The proposed mechanisms of groundwater transport and discharge in the Arctic land-shelf system is elaborated. Through salinity vs. ²²⁴Ra and ²²⁴Ra / ²²³Ra diagrams, the three main SGD-influenced water masses were identified and their end-member composition was constrained. Based on simple mass-balance box models, discharge rates at sites in the submarine permafrost talik zone were 1. 7 × 10⁶ m³ d⁻¹ or 19.9 m³ s⁻¹, which is much higher than the April discharge of the Yana River. Further studies should apply these techniques on a broader scale with the objective of elucidating the relative importance of the SGD transport vector relative to surface freshwater discharge for both water balance and aquatic components such as dissolved organic carbon, carbon dioxide, methane, and nutrients.