Underway pH measurements in upwelling conditions: The California current

Abstract

This paper reports the use of underway spectrophotometric pH as part of a series of measurements (together with underway salinity, temperature and some discrete measurements of chlorophyll a) made in the California Current coastal upwelling area. The values of pH obtained (measured at 25°C) ranged from 7.6 near the coastline (in the centre of the upwelling) to 8.3 at the western boundary of the study area (close to the oceanic environment); pH values were more uniform away from the influence of upwelling. Variations in the pH, temperature and chlorophyll a were all approximately in phase. In particular, higher pH values -indicative of photosynthetic activity- were well correlated with the chlorophyll a measurements. These results illustrate the need to consider both small and mesoscale processes when investigating carbon dioxide exchange across the air-sea interface in such systems, and also show that spectrophotometric pH measurements are sufficiently sensitive (and can be measured sufficiently rapidly) to describe various biogeochemical processes in such systems.