Cryoreactions and Arctic marine cryospheric chemistry

迅速变化的北冰洋正在为社会经济发展带来前所未有的机遇;与此相关的是保护环境完整性、生态系统服务、粮食安全以及因纽特人和其他土著人民的生活方式方面的前所未有的挑战。我的研究计划追求在或低于水冻结温度的化学反应的基础和应用研究，被称为cryreactions，以及它们在环境命运中的作用，以及在不断变化的气候中北极遗留和新兴污染物的影响。在接下来的五年里，我建议表征和参数化的化学反应发生在温度，盐度，压力，pH值，氧化还原和光照条件类似的北极海洋冰冻圈，包括海冰，覆盖的雪和底层海水。重点将是过去和目前全球排放的汞、北极日益增加的海运活动造成的石油泄漏，以及作为重建北冰洋过去海冰变异性的潜在代用指标的溴-汞耦合低温光化学。研究方法将在马尼托巴大学的一个专门的冰冻圈实验室中在完全受控的条件下进行分子水平的研究，并在加拿大北冰洋进行实地研究（例如，哈德逊湾、巴芬湾、博福特海）。这两个尺度之间的桥梁是在温尼伯的海冰环境研究设施和马尼托巴丘吉尔的新运作的丘吉尔海洋观测站进行的中宇宙尺度研究。连同地球化学和全球气候汞建模研究，拟议的研究将把分子水平的理解cryreactions工作项目过去，正在进行的，和未来的变化在时间和空间动态北极海洋冰冻圈及其对生态系统和人类健康的影响。拟议的研究计划将直接培养至少13名高素质的人才，包括一名副研究员，一名博士后研究员，三名博士生，三名硕士生和五名高年级本科生。低温反应和低温层化学是新的科学前沿，具有在冻结温度下发现新的反应途径和机制的基础科学的巨大潜力。对汞和石油泄漏的关注在很大程度上是由我与从哈德逊湾西部到北极高纬度地区的北极社区长达十年的接触所推动的。对冰冻圈化学过程的进一步了解将使我们能够更好地预测北极生态系统从汞污染中恢复的情况，管理和应对北极沃茨日益增加的石油泄漏风险，并更好地预测未来海冰的变化。总的来说，他们将支持加拿大北极地区及其他地区的污染控制和气候变化适应的政策制定和技术创新。

A rapidly changing Arctic Ocean is opening up unprecedented opportunities for socio-economic development; associated with these are unparalleled challenges to protect environmental integrity, ecosystem services, food security and the ways of living for Inuit and other Indigenous peoples. My research program pursues fundamental and applied studies on chemical reactions at or below water-freezing temperatures, known as cryoreactions, and their roles in environmental fate and effects of legacy and emerging contaminants in the Arctic in a changing climate. Over the next five years, I propose to characterize and parameterize chemical reactions occurring at temperature, salinity, pressure, pH, redox, and light conditions resembling those of the Arctic marine cryosphere including sea ice, the overlying snow and underlying seawater. The focus will be on mercury from past and ongoing global emissions, oil spills from increasing marine shipping activities in the Arctic, and the coupled bromine-mercury cryophotochemistry as a potential proxy to reconstruct past sea ice variability in the Arctic Ocean. The research methodology will integrate molecular-level studies at a dedicated cryospheric laboratory under fully controlled conditions at the University of Manitoba and field studies across the Canadian Arctic Ocean (e.g., Hudson Bay, Baffin Bay, Beaufort Sea). Bridging between these two scales are mesocosm-scale studies at the Sea-ice Environmental Research Facility in Winnipeg and the newly operational Churchill Marine Observatory in Churchill, Manitoba. Together with geochemical and global climate-mercury modeling studies, the proposed research will put molecular-level understanding of cryoreactions to work to project past, ongoing, and future changes in the temporally and spatially dynamic Arctic marine cryosphere and their implications for ecosystem and human health. The proposed research program will directly train at least 13 highly qualified personnel, including one research associate, one postdoctoral research fellow, three PhD students, three MSc students, and five senior undergraduate students. Cryoreactions and cryospheric chemistry are new scientific frontiers, with great potentials for fundamental scientific discoveries of new reaction pathways and mechanisms at freezing temperatures. The focus on mercury and oil spills is largely driven by my decade-long engagement with Arctic communities from western Hudson Bay to the High Arctic. The improved understanding of cryospheric chemical processes will allow us to improve the projection of Arctic ecosystem recovery from mercury pollution, to manage and respond to the increasing risk of oil spills in Arctic waters, and to better project future sea ice variability. Collectively, they will support policy-making and technological innovations for pollution control and climate change adaptation in the Canadian Arctic and beyond.