Northumbria University has developed Northumbria Research Link (NRL) to enable users to access the University's research output. Copyright © and moral rights for items on NRL are retained by the individual author(s) and/or other copyright owners. Single copies of full items can be reproduced, displayed or performed, and given to third parties in any format or medium for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-profit purposes without prior permission or charge, provided the authors, title and full bibliographic details are given, as well as a hyperlink and/or URL to the original metadata page. The content must not be changed in any way. Full items must not be sold commercially in any format or medium without formal permission of the copyright holder. The full policy is available online: http://nrl.northumbria.ac.uk/policies.html This document may differ from the final, published version of the research and has been made available online in accordance with publisher policies. To read and/or cite from the published version of the research, please visit the publisher's website (a subscription may be required.) A warming and shifting climate in the Arctic has led to significant declines in sea ice over the 31 last several decades. Although these changes in sea ice cover are well documented, large 32 uncertainties remain in how associated increases in solar radiation transmitted to the underlying 33 ocean water column will impact heating, biological and biogeochemical processes in the Arctic 34Ocean. In this study, six under-ice marine, two ice-free marine, and two ice-free terrestrially-35 influenced water samples were irradiated using a solar simulator for 72 hours (representing ~10 36 days of ambient sunlight) to investigate dissolved organic matter (DOM) dynamics from the 37Chukchi and Beaufort seas. Solar irradiation caused chromophoric DOM (CDOM) light 38 absorption at 254 nm to decrease by 48 to 63%. An overall loss in total DOM fluorescence 39 intensity was also observed at the end of all experiments, and each of 6 components identified by 40 parallel factor analyses (PARAFAC) was shown to be photoreactive in at least one experiment. 41 DOM fluorescence (FDOM) also indicated that the majority of DOM in under-ice and ice-free 42 marine waters was likely algal-derived. Measurable changes in dissolved organic carbon (DOC) 43 were only observed for sites influenced by riverine runoff. Losses of CDOM absorbance at 44 shorter wavelengths suggest that the beneficial UV protection currently received by marine 45 organisms may decline with the increased light transmittance associated with sea ice melt 46 ponding and overall reductions of sea ice. Our FDOM analyses demonstrate that DOM 47 irrespective of source was susceptible to photobleaching. Additionally, our findings suggest that 48 photodegradation of CDOM in under-ice waters is not currently a significant source of carbon 49 dioxide (CO 2 ) (i.e., we did not observe systematic DOC loss). However, increases in primary 50 production and terrestrial fres...