Seasonality in carbon flux attenuation explains spatial variability in transfer efficiency

This is a Preprint and has not been peer reviewed. The published version of this Preprint is available: https://doi.org/10.1029/2023GL107050. This is version 2 of this Preprint.

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Authors

Francisco de Melo Viríssimo, Adrian P. Martin, Stephanie Henson, Jamie D. Wilson

Abstract

Each year, the biological carbon pump is responsible for converting carbon dioxide into millions of tonnes of organic carbon, and for transferring a fraction of it to the deep ocean, where it can remain for hundreds of years. The efficiency of this surface-to-depth carbon transfer varies geographically, and is a key determinant of the atmosphere-ocean carbon dioxide balance. Traditionally, the attention has been focused on explaining perceived geographical variation in an attempt to understand it, an approach that has led to conflicting results. Here we use a combination of observations and modelling to show that the spatial variability in transfer efficiency can instead be due to seasonal variability in carbon flux attenuation. We also show that seasonality can explain the contrast between known global estimates of transfer efficiency, due to differences in the date and duration of sampling, as well as the methodologies used to derive the estimates. Our results suggest caution in the mechanistic interpretation of annual-mean patterns in transfer efficiency and demonstrates that seasonally and spatially-resolved datasets are required to generate accurate evaluations of the biological carbon pump.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.31223/X5966J

Subjects

Physical Sciences and Mathematics

Keywords

Biological carbon pump, carbon transfer efficiency, seasonality in flux attenuation, mesopelagic ocean, sinking speed, remineralisation, carbon transfer efficiency, seasonality in flux attenuation, mesopelagic ocean, sinking speed, remineralisation

Dates

Published: 2023-03-13 02:52

Last Updated: 2023-10-09 09:40

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License

CC BY Attribution 4.0 International

Additional Metadata

Conflict of interest statement:
The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Data Availability (Reason not available):
All model output used in this work is freely available online on Zenodo: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7514129. The data used to generate Fig.1(b) is available on Bitbucket: https://bitbucket.org/ohnoplus/prism-transfer-efficiency. All figures in this work were generated by the authors, except the latter, which was provided by Cram et. al (2018). See manuscript for further details.