Sea ice: a small player in global biogeochemical cycles

Martin Vancoppenolle (CNRS Researcher at LOCEAN/IPSL, Paris, France and a former researcher of our lab) will be soon giving a seminar reviewing recent research on biogeochemistry in the sea ice zones.

The response of the climate system to more greenhouse gases is marked by amplified warming at the poles, driven by physical processes in the atmosphere-ocean-sea ice system. Active biological and chemical processes, recently documented in the sea ice zone, could however modify the climate response in polar regions through changes in ocean carbon uptake or aerosol release. Here, I ask whether sea ice biogeochemistry is a neglected element of global biogeochemical cycles. I argue that the sea ice biogeochemical processes have only a limited importance on global biogeochemical cycles. The processes occurring in the ice itself are generally of minor importance as compared to ocean ones, mainly due to the limited size of the sea ice reservoir, compared to sub-surface oceanic stocks of chemical elements. I will explain and qualify my arguments based on observations and numerical simulations.