ISOGGAP

ISOGGAP (ISOtopic Investigation of Greenhouse GAses in Polar regions: An Ocean-Ice-Atmosphere Continuum) is a FRS-FNRS funded research project (PDR, 2017-2020).

The network is composed of  Université de Liège (Bruno Delille), Université Libre de Bruxelles (Jean-Louis Tison) and benefits from a strong analytical support from the Utrecht University (Thomas Röckmann)

Polar regions, that are worldwide recognized as the most affected by climate changes, still represent one of the largest uncertainties in the understanding of the greenhouse gases cycles (GHGs). How the sea ice cover affects these cycles remains one of the greatest unknown. ISOGGAP proposes to bridge gaps in the understanding of the processes controlling greenhouse gases cycles in the Arctic and Southern oceans, using an innovative and broad isotopic toolbox. ISOGGAP aims to carry out isotopic analyses (delta13C, deltaD, delta15N, delta18O,14C) of the three most potent greenhouse gases: carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O). Water, sea ice and atmospheric samples from both polar oceans will be analyzed in order to investigate and quantify the role of sea ice changes on the radiative forcing of the Earth.

Each process of incorporation, formation, removal and transport of GHGs affects their isotopic composition in a unique way, hence the use of isotopes represents a highly relevant innovative tool to investigate the biogeochemical cycles associated to GHGs and the contribution of their different sources and sinks to the atmospheric burden. To obtain a global picture of the role of sea ice and polar oceans on the GHGs cycles, we aim to perform a multi-parametric study on a large amount of samples covering a wide range of environments and all seasons across the ocean-ice-atmosphere continuum. This would be, to our best knowledge, the first attempt to perform isotopic analyses on GHGs extracted from sea ice.