Publication Date:
2022-05-26
Description:
Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2014. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Global Biogeochemical Cycles 28 (2014): 181-196, doi:10.1002/2013GB004743.
Description:
The export of organic carbon from the surface ocean by sinking particles is an important, yet highly uncertain, component of the global carbon cycle. Here we introduce a mechanistic assessment of the global ocean carbon export using satellite observations, including determinations of net primary production and the slope of the particle size spectrum, to drive a food-web model that estimates the production of sinking zooplankton feces and algal aggregates comprising the sinking particle flux at the base of the euphotic zone. The synthesis of observations and models reveals fundamentally different and ecologically consistent regional-scale patterns in export and export efficiency not found in previous global carbon export assessments. The model reproduces regional-scale particle export field observations and predicts a climatological mean global carbon export from the euphotic zone of ~6 Pg C yr−1. Global export estimates show small variation (typically 〈 10%) to factor of 2 changes in model parameter values. The model is also robust to the choices of the satellite data products used and enables interannual changes to be quantified. The present synthesis of observations and models provides a path for quantifying the ocean's biological pump.
Description:
D.A.S. and K.O.B. acknowledge support
from the National Aeronautics and
Space Administration (NNX11AF63G).
S.C.D. and S.F.S. acknowledge support
from the National Science Foundation
through the Center for Microbial
Oceanography: Research and Education
(C-MORE) (NSF EF-0424599).
Description:
2014-09-10
Keywords:
Carbon cycle
;
Biological pump
;
Carbon export
;
Remote sensing
;
Food webs
Repository Name:
Woods Hole Open Access Server
Type:
Article
Format:
application/msword
Format:
application/pdf
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