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Biogeochemistry

Rusty meltwaters

Nature Geoscience volume 6, pages 251–252 (2013)Cite this article

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Iron limits plankton productivity in large regions of the global ocean. Analyses of meltwater from the Greenland ice sheet suggests that subglacial weathering delivers significant quantities of biologically available iron to the North Atlantic Ocean.

The main sources of iron to the ocean were thought to be rivers and, in remote areas, atmospheric dust — until recently. Now other sources vie for attention, including shelf sediments, icebergs and hydrothermal vents1. The contribution of glacial discharge to oceanic iron cycling was thought to be negligible, however, with meltwater iron concentrations falling below 100 nM (ref. 2). Writing in Nature Geoscience, Bhatia and colleagues3 report meltwater iron concentrations in the micromolar range, raising questions about the origin of subglacial meltwaters and their influence on the marine environment.

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Figure 1: Iron-rich waters draining a glacier in Svalbard, an archipelago in the Arctic Ocean.

© JEREMY D. OWENS

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Rob Raiswell is in the School of Earth and Environment, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK,

    Rob Raiswell

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  1. Rob Raiswell
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Correspondence to Rob Raiswell.

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Raiswell, R. Rusty meltwaters. Nature Geosci 6, 251–252 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo1776

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