Beryllium Isotopes in Marine Science: Understanding Ocean Current and Ice Dynamics

The Earth's climate has been kept under Goldilocks conditions because a variety of feedback systems maintain the atmospheric pCO₂ within a narrow range. The ocean, as a large reservoir of carbon compared with the atmosphere, plays a key role in the climate system, and studying ocean process can help us better understand this system. Cosmogenic nuclides produced in the atmosphere and their ratio to a terrestrial counterpart can provide detailed depictions of Earth surface process, and they have therefore been utilized widely since it became possible to measure them with accelerator mass spectrometry. Beryllium isotopes (¹⁰Be $/$ ⁹Be) are one of the most useful isotope systems for this purpose. In this article, we summarize recent developments in beryllium isotope chemistry and the isotopes’ relation to ocean current and ice sheet dynamics as well as weathering in relation to long-term climate.