scholarly journals Assessment of a global climatology of oceanic dimethylsulfide (DMS) concentrations based on SeaWiFS imagery (1998-2001)

2004 ◽  
Vol 61 (5) ◽  
pp. 804-816 ◽  
Author(s):  
S Belviso ◽  
C Moulin ◽  
L Bopp ◽  
J Stefels

A method is developed to estimate sea-surface particulate dimethylsulfoniopropionate (DMSPp) and dimethylsulfide (DMS) concentrations from sea-surface concentrations of chlorophyll a (Chl a). When compared with previous studies, the 1° × 1° global climatology of oceanic DMS concentrations computed from 4 years (1998–2001) of Chl a measurements derived from SeaWiFS (satellite-based, sea-viewing wide field of view sensor) exhibits lower seasonal variability in the southern hemisphere than in the northern hemisphere. A first evaluation of the method shows that it reasonably well represents DMSPp and DMS in the North Atlantic subtropical gyre, in large blooms of mixed populations of diatoms and Phaeocystis spp., and in massive blooms of Phaeocystis spp. but fails for large, almost pure blooms of diatoms. DMSPp and DMS concentrations derived from SeaWiFS were also compared with spatially and temporally coincident in situ measurements acquired independently in the Atlantic between 39°N and 45°N and in subtropical and subantarctic Indian Ocean surface waters. Moderate spring and summer phytoplankton blooms there exhibited similar trends in DMSPp and DMS levels vs. moderate blooms of mixed populations of prymnesiophytes and dinoflagellates investigated by others. Measured DMS largely exceeded simulated DMS concentrations, whereas measured and simulated DMSPp levels were in close agreement. DMS accumulation is tentatively attributed to dinoflagellate DMSP lyase activity.


2008 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 535-547 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Olsen ◽  
K. R. Brown ◽  
M. Chierici ◽  
T. Johannessen ◽  
C. Neill

Abstract. We present the first year-long subpolar trans-Atlantic set of surface seawater CO2 fugacity (fCO2sw) data. The data were obtained aboard the MV Nuka Arctica in 2005 and provide a quasi-continuous picture of the fCO2sw variability between Denmark and Greenland. Complementary real-time high-resolution data of surface chlorophyll-a (chl-a) concentrations and mixed layer depth (MLD) estimates have been collocated with the fCO2sw data. Off-shelf fCO2sw data exhibit a pronounced seasonal cycle. In winter, surface waters are saturated to slightly supersaturated over a wide range of temperatures. Through spring and summer, fCO2sw decreases by approximately 60 μatm, due to biological carbon consumption, which is not fully counteracted by the fCO2sw increase due to summer warming. The changes are synchronous with changes in chl-a concentrations and MLD, both of which are exponentially correlated with fCO2sw in off-shelf regions.



2007 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 436-448 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ronald J. Stouffer ◽  
Dan Seidov ◽  
Bernd J. Haupt

Abstract The response of an atmosphere–ocean general circulation model (AOGCM) to perturbations of freshwater fluxes across the sea surface in the North Atlantic and Southern Ocean is investigated. The purpose of this study is to investigate aspects of the so-called bipolar seesaw where one hemisphere warms and the other cools and vice versa due to changes in the ocean meridional overturning. The experimental design is idealized where 1 Sv (1 Sv ≡ 106 m3 s−1) of freshwater is added to the ocean surface for 100 model years and then removed. In one case, the freshwater perturbation is located in the Atlantic Ocean from 50° to 70°N. In the second case, it is located south of 60°S in the Southern Ocean. In the case where the North Atlantic surface waters are freshened, the Atlantic thermohaline circulation (THC) and associated northward oceanic heat transport weaken. In the Antarctic surface freshening case, the Atlantic THC is mainly unchanged with a slight weakening toward the end of the integration. This weakening is associated with the spreading of the fresh sea surface anomaly from the Southern Ocean into the rest of the World Ocean. There are two mechanisms that may be responsible for such weakening of the Atlantic THC. First is that the sea surface salinity (SSS) contrast between the North Atlantic and North Pacific is reduced. And, second, when freshwater from the Southern Ocean reaches the high latitudes of the North Atlantic Ocean, it hinders the sinking of the surface waters, leading to the weakening of the THC. The spreading of the fresh SSS anomaly from the Southern Ocean into the surface waters worldwide was not seen in earlier experiments. Given the geography and climatology of the Southern Hemisphere where the climatological surface winds push the surface waters northward away from the Antarctic continent, it seems likely that the spreading of the fresh surface water anomaly could occur in the real world. A remarkable symmetry between the two freshwater perturbation experiments in the surface air temperature (SAT) response can be seen. In both cases, the hemisphere with the freshwater perturbation cools, while the opposite hemisphere warms slightly. In the zonally averaged SAT figures, both the magnitude and the pattern of the anomalies look similar between the two cases. The oceanic response, on the other hand, is very different for the two freshwater cases, as noted above for the spreading of the SSS anomaly and the associated THC response. If the differences between the atmospheric and oceanic responses apply to the real world, then the interpretation of paleodata may need to be revisited. To arrive at a correct interpretation, it matters whether or not the evidence is mainly of atmospheric or oceanic origin. Also, given the sensitivity of the results to the exact details of the freshwater perturbation locations, especially in the Southern Hemisphere, a more realistic scenario must be constructed to explore these questions.



2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 217-231 ◽  
Author(s):  
I. Borrione ◽  
R. Schlitzer

Abstract. South Georgia phytoplankton blooms are amongst the largest of the Southern Ocean and are associated with a rich ecosystem and strong atmospheric carbon drawdown. Both aspects depend on the intensity of blooms, but also on their regularity. Here we use data from 12 yr of SeaWiFS (Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-view Sensor) ocean colour imagery and calculate the frequency of bloom occurrence (FBO) to re-examine spatial and temporal bloom distributions. We find that upstream of the island and outside the borders of the Georgia Basin, blooms occurred in less than 4 out of the 12 yr (FBO < 4). In contrast, FBO was mostly greater than 8 downstream of the island, i.e., to the north and northwest, and in places equal to 12, indicating that blooms occurred every year. The typical bloom area, defined as the region where blooms occurred in at least 8 out of the 12 yr, covers the entire Georgia Basin and the northern shelf of the island. The time series of surface chlorophyll a (Chl a) concentrations averaged over the typical bloom area shows that phytoplankton blooms occurred in every year between September 1997 and September 2010, and that Chl a values followed a clear seasonal cycle, with concentration peaks around December followed in many years by a second peak during late austral summer or early autumn, suggesting a bi-modal bloom pattern. The bloom regularity we describe here is in contrast with results of Park et al. (2010) who used a significantly different study area including regions that almost never exhibit bloom conditions.



2009 ◽  
Vol 66 (7) ◽  
pp. 1467-1479 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah L. Hughes ◽  
N. Penny Holliday ◽  
Eugene Colbourne ◽  
Vladimir Ozhigin ◽  
Hedinn Valdimarsson ◽  
...  

Abstract Hughes, S. L., Holliday, N. P., Colbourne, E., Ozhigin, V., Valdimarsson, H., Østerhus, S., and Wiltshire, K. 2009. Comparison of in situ time-series of temperature with gridded sea surface temperature datasets in the North Atlantic. – ICES Journal of Marine Science, 66: 1467–1479. Analysis of the effects of climate variability and climate change on the marine ecosystem is difficult in regions where long-term observations of ocean temperature are sparse or unavailable. Gridded sea surface temperature (SST) products, based on a combination of satellite and in situ observations, can be used to examine variability and long-term trends because they provide better spatial coverage than the limited sets of long in situ time-series. SST data from three gridded products (Reynolds/NCEP OISST.v2., Reynolds ERSST.v3, and the Hadley Centre HadISST1) are compared with long time-series of in situ measurements from ICES standard sections in the North Atlantic and Nordic Seas. The variability and trends derived from the two data sources are examined, and the usefulness of the products as a proxy for subsurface conditions is discussed.



2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (11) ◽  
pp. 1839 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jorge Vazquez-Cuervo ◽  
Jose Gomez-Valdes ◽  
Marouan Bouali

Validation of satellite-based retrieval of ocean parameters like Sea Surface Temperature (SST) and Sea Surface Salinity (SSS) is commonly done via statistical comparison with in situ measurements. Because in situ observations derived from coastal/tropical moored buoys and Argo floats are only representatives of one specific geographical point, they cannot be used to measure spatial gradients of ocean parameters (i.e., two-dimensional vectors). In this study, we exploit the high temporal sampling of the unmanned surface vehicle (USV) Saildrone (i.e., one measurement per minute) and describe a methodology to compare the magnitude of SST and SSS gradients derived from satellite-based products with those captured by Saildrone. Using two Saildrone campaigns conducted in the California/Baja region in 2018 and in the North Atlantic Gulf Stream in 2019, we compare the magnitude of gradients derived from six different GHRSST Level 4 SST (MUR, OSTIA, CMC, K10, REMSS, and DMI) and two SSS (JPLSMAP, RSS40km) datasets. While results indicate strong consistency between Saildrone- and satellite-based observations of SST and SSS, this is not the case for derived gradients with correlations lower than 0.4 for SST and 0.1 for SSS products.



2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (13) ◽  
pp. 2092
Author(s):  
Lisan Yu

Satellite remote sensing of sea surface salinity (SSS) in the recent decade (2010–2019) has proven the capability of L-band (1.4 GHz) measurements to resolve SSS spatiotemporal variability in the tropical and subtropical oceans. However, the fidelity of SSS retrievals in cold waters at mid-high latitudes has yet to be established. Here, four SSS products derived from two satellite missions were evaluated in the subpolar North Atlantic Ocean in reference to two in situ gridded products. Harmonic analysis of annual and semiannual cycles in in situ products revealed that seasonal variations of SSS are dominated by an annual cycle, with a maximum in March and a minimum in September. The annual amplitudes are larger (>0.3 practical salinity scale (pss)) in the western basin where surface waters are colder and fresher, and weaker (~0.06 pss) in the eastern basin where surface waters are warmer and saltier. Satellite SSS products have difficulty producing the right annual cycle, particularly in the Labrador/Irminger seas where the SSS seasonality is dictated by the influx of Arctic low-salinity waters along the boundary currents. The study also found that there are basin-scale, time-varying drifts in the decade-long SMOS data records, which need to be corrected before the datasets can be used for studying climate variability of SSS.



2002 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 1 of 13-13 of 13 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marie-Alexandrine Sicre ◽  
Edouard Bard ◽  
Ullah Ezat ◽  
Frauke Rostek




2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (14) ◽  
pp. 2805
Author(s):  
Hongwei Sun ◽  
Junyu He ◽  
Yihui Chen ◽  
Boyu Zhao

Sea surface partial pressure of CO2 (pCO2) is a critical parameter in the quantification of air–sea CO2 flux, which plays an important role in calculating the global carbon budget and ocean acidification. In this study, we used chlorophyll-a concentration (Chla), sea surface temperature (SST), dissolved and particulate detrital matter absorption coefficient (Adg), the diffuse attenuation coefficient of downwelling irradiance at 490 nm (Kd) and mixed layer depth (MLD) as input data for retrieving the sea surface pCO2 in the North Atlantic based on a remote sensing empirical approach with the Categorical Boosting (CatBoost) algorithm. The results showed that the root mean square error (RMSE) is 8.25 μatm, the mean bias error (MAE) is 4.92 μatm and the coefficient of determination (R2) can reach 0.946 in the validation set. Subsequently, the proposed algorithm was applied to the sea surface pCO2 in the North Atlantic Ocean during 2003–2020. It can be found that the North Atlantic sea surface pCO2 has a clear trend with latitude variations and have strong seasonal changes. Furthermore, through variance analysis and EOF (empirical orthogonal function) analysis, the sea surface pCO2 in this area is mainly affected by sea temperature and salinity, while it can also be influenced by biological activities in some sub-regions.



2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Edwards ◽  
Pierre Hélaouët ◽  
Eric Goberville ◽  
Alistair Lindley ◽  
Geraint A. Tarling ◽  
...  

AbstractIn the North Atlantic, euphausiids (krill) form a major link between primary production and predators including commercially exploited fish. This basin is warming very rapidly, with species expected to shift northwards following their thermal tolerances. Here we show, however, that there has been a 50% decline in surface krill abundance over the last 60 years that occurred in situ, with no associated range shift. While we relate these changes to the warming climate, our study is the first to document an in situ squeeze on living space within this system. The warmer isotherms are shifting measurably northwards but cooler isotherms have remained relatively static, stalled by the subpolar fronts in the NW Atlantic. Consequently the two temperatures defining the core of krill distribution (7–13 °C) were 8° of latitude apart 60 years ago but are presently only 4° apart. Over the 60 year period the core latitudinal distribution of euphausiids has remained relatively stable so a ‘habitat squeeze’, with loss of 4° of latitude in living space, could explain the decline in krill. This highlights that, as the temperature warms, not all species can track isotherms and shift northward at the same rate with both losers and winners emerging under the ‘Atlantification’ of the sub-Arctic.



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