Description: Because geoscientific research often occurs via community-instigated bursts of activity with multi-investigator collaborations variously labelled as e.g., years (The International Polar Year IPY), experiments (World Ocean Circulation Experiment WOCE), programs (International Ocean Discovery Program), missions (CRYOSAT spacecraft), or decades (The International Decade of Ocean Exploration IDOE), successful attainment of research goals generally requires skilful scientific project management. In addition to the usual challenges of matching scientific ambitions to limited resources, on-going coordination and specifically project management, planning and implementation of polar science projects often involve many uncertainties caused by, for example, unpredictable weather or ocean and sea ice conditions, large-scale logistical juggling; and often these collaborations are spatially distributed and take place virtually. Large amounts of funding are needed to procure the considerable infrastructure and technical equipment required for polar expeditions; permissions to enter certain regions must be requested; and potential risks for expedition members as well as technical issues in extreme environments need to be considered. All these aspects are challenging for polar science projects, which therefore need a well thought-through program including a realistic alternative “plan B” and possibly also a “plan C” and “plan D”. The four most challenging overarching themes in polar science project management have been identified: international cooperation, interdisciplinarity, infrastructure, and community management. In this paper, we address ongoing challenges and opportunities in polar science project management based on a survey among 199 project and community managers and an additional of 85 project team members active in the field of polar sciences. Case studies and survey results are discussed with the conclusive goal to provide recommendations on how to fully reach the potential of polar sciences project and community management.

Description: Poseidon cruise 518 (leg 1 and 2) took place in the framework of the Horizon 2020 project STEMM-CCS of the EU. The project’s main goal is to develop and test strategies and technologies for the monitoring of subseafloor CO2 storage operations. In this context a small research-scale CO2 gas release experiment is planned for 2019 in the vicinity of the Goldeneye platform located in the British EEZ (central North Sea). Cruise POS518 aimed at collecting necessary oceanographic and biogeochemical baseline data for this release experiment. During Leg 1 ROV PHOCA was used to deploy MPI’s tool for high-precision measurements of O2, CO2 and pH in the bottom water at Goldeneye. In addition, ROV push cores and gravity cores were collected in the area for sediment biogeochemical analyses, and video-CTD casts were conducted to study the water column chemistry. The stereo-camera system and a horizontally looking multibeam echosounder, both, for determining gas bubble emissions at the seafloor were deployed at the Figge Maar blowout crater in the German Bight. Investigations were complemented by hydroacoustic surveys detecting gas bubble leakages at several abandoned wells in the North Sea as well as the Figge Maar. Surface water alkalinity as well as CH4, CO2, and water partial pressures in the air above the sea surface were measured continuously during the cruise. During Leg 2 three different benthic lander systems were deployed to obtain baseline data of oceanographic and biogeochemical parameters for a small research-scale CO2 gas release experiment planned for 2019. The first lander was equipped with an acoustic Doppler current profiler (ADCP), a CTD and an O2 optode. It was deployed for 6 days close to Goldeneye to obtain high resolution data which can be linked to the long-term measurements of the NOC-Lander. This lander is equipped with a suite of sensors to monitor temperature, conductivity, pressure, current speed and direction, hydro-acoustic, pH, pCO2, O2 and nutrients over a period of about 10 months with popup telemetry units for data transmission via IRIDIUM satellite telemetry every 3 months. Two short-term deployments of the Biogeochemical Observatory (BIGO) were conducted to study the molar ratio between oxygen and CO2-fluxes at the seafloor. Sediment cores obtained by gravity and multi corer were collected for sediment biogeochemical analyses and video-CTD casts were used to study the chemistry of the water column.

Description: Reconstructions of Quaternary climate are often based on the isotopic content of paleo-precipitation preserved in proxy records. While many paleo-precipitation isotope records are available, few studies have synthesized these dispersed records to explore spatial patterns of late-glacial precipitation δ18O. Here we present a synthesis of 86 globally distributed groundwater (n = 59), 
cave calcite (n = 15) and ice core (n = 12)
 isotope records spanning the late-glacial (defined as
 ~ 50000 to ∼ 20000 years ago) to the late-Holocene (within the past ∼5000 years). We show that precipitation δ18O changes from the late-glacial to the late-Holocene range from −7.1 ‰ (δ18Olate-Holocene 〉 δ18Olate-glacial) to +1.7 ‰ (δ18Olate-glacial 〉 δ18Olate-Holocene), with the majority (77 %) of records having lower late-glacial δ18O than late-Holocene δ18O values. High-magnitude, negative precipitation δ18O shifts are common at high latitudes, high altitudes and continental interiors (δ18Olate-Holocene 〉 δ18Olate-glacial by more than 3‰). Conversely, low-magnitude, positive precipitation δ18O shifts are concentrated along tropical and subtropical coasts (δ18Olate-glacial 〉 δ18Olate-Holocene by less than 2 ‰). Broad, global patterns of late-glacial to late-Holocene precipitation δ18O shifts suggest that stronger-than-modern isotopic distillation of air masses prevailed during the late-glacial, likely impacted by larger global temperature differences between the tropics and the poles. Further, to test how well general circulation models reproduce global precipitation δ18O shifts, we compiled simulated precipitation δ18O shifts from five isotope-enabled general circulation models simulated under recent and last glacial maximum climate states. Climate simulations generally show better inter-model and model-measurement agreement in temperate regions than in the tropics, highlighting a need for further research to better understand how inter-model spread in convective rainout, seawater δ18O and glacial topography parameterizations impact simulated precipitation δ18O. Future research on paleo-precipitation δ18O records can use the global maps of measured and simulated late-glacial precipitation isotope compositions to target and prioritize field sites.

Description: The Argentine margin contains important sedimentological, paleontological and chemical records of regional and local tectonic evolution, sea level, climate evolution and ocean circulation since the opening of the South Atlantic in the Late Jurassic–Early Cretaceous as well as the present-day results of post-depositional chemical and biological alteration. Despite its important location, which underlies the exchange of southern- and northern-sourced water masses, the Argentine margin has not been investigated in detail using scientific drilling techniques, perhaps because the margin has the reputation of being erosional. However, a number of papers published since 2009 have reported new high-resolution and/or multichannel seismic surveys, often combined with multi-beam bathymetric data, which show the common occurrence of layered sediments and prominent sediment drifts on the Argentine and adjacent Uruguayan margins. There has also been significant progress in studying the climatic records in surficial and near-surface sediments recovered in sediment cores from the Argentine margin. Encouraged by these recent results, our 3.5-day IODP (International Ocean Discovery Program) workshop in Buenos Aires (8–11 September 2015) focused on opportunities for scientific drilling on the Atlantic margin of Argentina, which lies beneath a key portion of the global ocean conveyor belt of thermohaline circulation. Significant opportunities exist to study the tectonic evolution, paleoceanography and stratigraphy, sedimentology, and biosphere and geochemistry of this margin.

Description: Prior to the 3rd annual meeting in month 32 a project progress report for the external project boards will be prepared to enable them to as good as possible prepared for the meeting and to ensure consequently that AtlantOS receives as constructive as possible recommendations from the board. The report together with the external summary board meeting report will be part of D11.6

Description: During the ARK XXV 1+2 expedition in the Arctic Ocean carried out in June–July 2010 aboard the R/V Polarstern, we measured carbon monoxide (CO), non-methane hydrocarbons (NMHC) and phytoplankton pigments at the sea surface and down to a depth 5 of 100m. The CO and NMHC sea-surface concentrations were highly variable; CO, propene and isoprene levels ranged from 0.6 to 17.5 nmol l−1, 1 to 322 pmol l−1 and 1 to 541 pmol l−1, respectively. The CO and alkene concentrations were enhanced in polar waters off of Greenland, which were more stratified because of ice melting and richer in chromophoric dissolved organic matter (CDOM) than typical North Atlantic 10 waters. The spatial distribution of the surface concentrations of CO was consistent with our current understanding of CO-induced UV photo-production in the sea. The vertical distributions of the CO and alkenes followed the trend of light penetration, with the concentrations displaying a relatively regular exponential decrease down to nonmeasurable values below 50 m. However, no diurnal variations of CO or alkene con15 centrations were observed in the stratified and irradiated surface layers. This finding suggests that the production and removal processes of CO and alkenes were tightly coupled. We tentatively determined a first-order rate constant for the microbial consumption of CO of 0.5 d−1, which is in agreement with previous studies. On several occasions, we observed the existence of subsurface CO maxima at the level of the 20 deep chlorophyll maximum. This finding represents field evidence for the existence of a non-photochemical CO production pathway, most likely of phytoplanktonic origin. The corresponding production rates normalized to the chlorophyll content were in the range of those estimated from laboratory experiments. In general, the vertical distributions of isoprene followed that of the phytoplankton biomass. Hence, oceanic data support the 25 existence of biological production of CO and isoprene in the Arctic Ocean