Earth System Science Data

This Special Issue of ESSD focuses on the biomass of global plankton. It invites contributions of plankton biomass data for sharing, for compilation and intercomparison, and will facilitate the evaluation of global, regional and coastal marine ecosystem models. The Special Issue will cover 9 plankton functional types (PFTs): the silicifiers (diatoms), calcifying phytoplankton (coccolithophores), nitrogen fixers (diazotrophs), DMS-producers (Phaeocystis), picophytoplankton, bacteria, meso- and macrozooplankton, as well as other calcifying zooplankton (planktonic foraminifera and pteropods). It will also include a paper on DOC distributions. Papers will discuss the temporal and spatial distributions of plankton biomasses, and treat issues of quality control and uncertainties. Biomass distributions will be provided as gridded products accessible to the global marine science community.

Understanding and quantifying the chemical interactions of ice and snow with trace gases in the atmosphere is a major challenge in atmospheric chemistry. Ice in the environment, from ice particles in clouds, to sea ice and snow at the Earth's surface, has a profound influence on atmospheric composition and climate. A quantitative, mechanistic understanding of trace gas-ice interactions is critical for predicting the effects of climate change on atmospheric composition, for the interpretation of ice core chemical records, and for modeling atmospheric chemistry. There are significant gaps in our current understanding of the uptake of gases by ice, including uncertainty regarding the microphysical location of species upon uptake, rates and mechanisms of chemical processes taking place in/on ice, the role of interfacial layers at the ice surface, and the role of biological activity in the ice.

This special issue is comprised of a series of review articles originating from the 3rd Workshop on Air-Ice Chemical Interactions, which was held at Columbia University in New York, NY from June 6-8, 2011.