Behaviour of dissolved organic matter during formation of natural and artificially grown Baltic Sea ice

Abstract

During sea-ice formation, the dissolved constituents of water are rejected from ice crystals. The initial fractionation of dissolved organic matter (DOM) in the Baltic Sea ice was studied through two freezing experiments and by sampling natural sea ice. DOM was characterized by the spectral absorption of chromophoric DOM (CDOM) and the parallel factor analysis of DOM fluorescence. Molecular weight measurements of DOM were applied to assess changes in the molecular size distribution of DOM in new sea ice relative to parent sea water. Both in the newly formed artificial and the natural sea ice, CDOM was enriched by 34-39% relative to salinity. The same three identified DOM fluorophores were present both in sea water and ice but enriched by 15-54% relative to salinity in ice. After the incorporation of DOM into ice, the ageing of ice decreased the spectral slope coefficient and the molecular weight of DOM. This study shows that physical processes during freezing of brackish water enrich chromo- and fluorophoric DOM relative to salts in sea ice.