Export fluxes of dissolved inorganic carbon to the Northern Indian Ocean from the Indian monsoonal rivers
Abstract. Rivers are strong source of dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) to the adjacent coastal waters. In order to identify the major sources of DIC in the Indian monsoonal estuaries and their export flux to the north Indian Ocean, 27 major and medium estuaries along the Indian coast were sampled during discharge period. An order of magnitude variability in DIC concentrations was found within the Indian estuaries sampled (3.4–44.1 mg l−1) due to significant variability in the size of rivers, precipitation pattern and lithology in the catchments. Dilution with high precipitation (2500 ± 500 mm) and exchange with ground waters of low DIC resulted in very low concentrations of DIC in estuaries located in the southwest of India (6.6 ± 2.1 mg l−1) than the estuaries located in the southeast (36.3 ± 6.3 mg l−1), northwest (30.3 ± 8.9 mg l−1) and northeast (19.5 ± 6.2 mg l−1) regions of India. Though the range of stable carbon isotopes of DIC (δ13CDIC) indicates that DIC is largely contributed by weathering of silicate and carbonate minerals, however, the storage of water in dams/reservoirs and intrusion of marine waters caused the enrichment in stable carbon isotopic composition of DIC (δ13CDIC). It is estimated that the Indian monsoonal estuaries annually export ~10.4 Tg (1 Tg = 1012 g) of DIC to the northern Indian Ocean, of which the major fraction (74.2 %) enters into the Bay of Bengal and the remaining reaches to the Arabian Sea. It is mainly due to the fact that the Bay of Bengal receives ~378 km3 yr−1 of freshwater from the catchment area of about 0.96 million km−2, whereas the Arabian Sea receives only 122 km3 yr−1 of freshwater from the catchment area of only 0.23 million km2. Though the discharge from the Indian monsoonal rivers account for only 1.3 % of global freshwater discharge, they disproportionately export 2.5 % of the total DIC export by the world major rivers and 9.4 % of the Asian rivers to oceans. The yield of DIC was found to be higher in the SW estuaries (10.8 ± 6.6 g m−2 yr−1) than the other estuaries though they export only 0.3 Tg yr−1 of DIC, which is more than an order of magnitude lower than the export by the NE (4.2 Tg yr−1) and SE estuaries (3.5 Tg yr−1), due to intense precipitation, favorable natural vegetation and tropical wet climate, high soil organic carbon and dominance of red loamy soils in catchments of the SW rivers. This study, therefore, reveals that significant variability in the lithology and hydrological and environmental conditions over the catchments strongly controls the concentrations and yield of DIC from the Indian monsoonal estuaries.