Deposition of7Be to Bermuda and the regional ocean: Environmental factors affecting estimates of atmospheric flux to the ocean

Abstract

[1] The distribution of 7Be in ocean surface waters is used as tracer of upper ocean transport and atmospheric deposition processes. However, there is very little ocean deposition data available to characterize the temporal and spatial input of 7Be to the oceans and test model results. Here we measure the deposition of 7Be in bulk collectors at two sites at Bermuda over a span of nearly 2 years (April 2007 to January 2009) and compare these rates to the flux required to sustain the inventory of 7Be measured in the nearby Sargasso Sea. The Tudor Hill collector site undersampled (by ∼40%) both the rainfall compared to other Bermuda sites and the 7Be flux required for the ocean inventory. On the other hand, the 7Be flux captured at the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences station site (0.048 dpm cm−2 d−1) matched that expected from the ocean observations. Previously measured long-term atmospheric concentration of 7Be in surface air at Bermuda was used to estimate deposition velocities and scavenging ratios, and our estimates in this marine environment were found to be similar to those measured in continental regions. The deposition of 7Be to the oceans is overwhelmingly determined by wet processes; dry deposition to the ocean surface accounts for only a few percent, at most, of the total deposition to the ocean. We place these measurements in a longer-term and large-scale spatial context by using climatological rainfall data on Bermuda and ocean rainfall estimates from the Global Precipitation Climatology Program and Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission.