Publication Date:
2022-10-26
Description:
Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2019. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Geophysical Research-Oceans 124(8), (2019): 5999-6014, doi: 10.1029/2019JC015034.
Description:
Oceanic fronts are dynamically active regions of the global ocean that support upwelling and downwelling with significant implications for phytoplankton production and export. However (on time scales urn:x-wiley:jgrc:media:jgrc23568:jgrc23568-math-0001 the inertial time scale), the vertical velocity is 103–104 times weaker than the horizontal velocity and is difficult to observe directly. Using intensive field observations in conjunction with a process study ocean model, we examine vertical motion and its effect on phytoplankton fluxes at multiple spatial horizontal scales in an oligotrophic region in the Western Mediterranean Sea. The mesoscale ageostrophic vertical velocity (∼10 m/day) inferred from our observations shapes the large‐scale phytoplankton distribution but does not explain the narrow (1–10 km wide) features of high chlorophyll content extending 40–60 m downward from the deep chlorophyll maximum. Using modeling, we show that downwelling submesoscale features concentrate 80% of the downward vertical flux of phytoplankton within just 15% of the horizontal area. These submesoscale spatial structures serve as conduits between the surface mixed layer and pycnocline and can contribute to exporting carbon from the sunlit surface layers to the ocean interior.
Description:
The AlborEx experiment was conducted in the framework of PERSEUS EU‐funded project (Grant 287600) and was led by the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and involved other national and international partners: Balearic Islands Coastal Observing and Forecasting System (SOCIB, Spain); Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR, Italy); Istituto Nazionale di Oceanografia e di Geofisica Sperimentale (OGS, Italy); and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI, ONR Grant N00014‐16‐1‐3130). Glider operations were partially funded by JERICO FP7 project. Part of this work has been carried out as part of the Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service (CMEMS) MedSUB project. CMEMS is implemented by Mercator Ocean in the framework of a delegation agreement with the European Union. S. R. and A. P. acknowledge support from WHOI Subcontract A101339. Data available from authors: Ship CTDs, glider and VM‐ADCP data files are available in the SOCIB data catalog (https://doi.org/10.25704/z5y2-qpye); model data are available at IMEDEA data catalog https://ide.imedea.uib-csic.es/thredds/catalog/data/projects/alborex/catalog.html. We thank all the crew and participants on board R/V SOCIB for their collaboration and Marc Torner and the SOCIB glider Facility for their efficient cooperation. We also thank B. Mourre for numerical data from the Western Mediterranean Operational Model to initialize the Process Study Ocean Model. Figures were created using the cmocean colormaps package (Thyng et al., 2016).
Keywords:
Vertical motion
;
Ocean front
;
Mesoscale
;
Submesoscale
;
Transport
;
Phytoplankton
Repository Name:
Woods Hole Open Access Server
Type:
Article
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