Monitoring & Modeling
Eddy compensation and controls of the enhanced sea-to-air CO<sub>2</sub> flux during positive phases of the Southern Annular Mode
The current positive trend in the Southern Annular Mode (SAM) is thought to reduce the growth rate of the Southern Ocean CO2 sink because enhanced wind-driven upwelling of dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) increases outgassing of natural CO2. However, no study to date has quantified the potentially large role of mesoscale eddies in compensating intensified upwelling nor
Oxygen and indicators of stress for marine life in multi-model global warming projections
Decadal-to-century scale trends for a range of marine environmental variables in the upper mesopelagic layer (UML, 100–600 m) are investigated using results from seven Earth System Models forced by a high greenhouse gas emission scenario. The models as a class represent the observation-based distribution of oxygen (O2) and carbon dioxide (CO2), albeit major mismatches between
Autonomous Ocean Measurements in the California Current Ecosystem
Event-scale phenomena, of limited temporal duration or restricted spatial extent, often play a disproportionately large role in ecological processes occurring in the ocean water column. Nutrient and gas fluxes, upwelling and downwelling, transport of biogeochemically important elements, predator-prey interactions, and other processes may be markedly influenced by such events, which are inadequately resolved from infrequent
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Decadal water-property trends in the California Undercurrent, with implications for ocean acidification
This study uses data along the West Coast of North America to analyze the spatial and temporal evolution of water properties to around 500 m depth. The analysis uses potential density ( δθ ) as the vertical coordinate and bottom depth and latitude as the horizontal coordinates. The study uses historical data from the World
Seawater pH measurements in the field: A DIY photometer with 0.01 unit pH accuracy
A portable light-emitting-diode (LED) photometer has been developed to provide low-cost seawater pH measurements. The benefits of the new system include a simple “do-it-yourself” construction design, a hundredfold reduction in cost relative to benchtop spectrophotometric systems, routine calibration-free operation in the field, and precision and accuracy well suited to applications such as education, coastal zone
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Interannual sea–air CO<sub>2</sub> flux variability from an observation-driven ocean mixed-layer scheme
Interannual anomalies in the sea–air carbon dioxide (CO2) exchange have been estimated from surface-ocean CO2 partial pressure measurements. Available data are sufficient to constrain these anomalies in large parts of the tropical and North Pacific and in the North Atlantic, in some areas covering the period from the mid 1980s to 2011. Global interannual variability is
State of the Climate in 2013
In 2013, the vast majority of the monitored climate variables reported here maintained trends established in recent decades. ENSO was in a neutral state during the entire year, remaining mostly on the cool side of neutral with modest impacts on regional weather patterns aroundthe world. This follows several years dominated by the effects of either
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An update to the Surface Ocean CO<sub>2</sub> Atlas (SOCAT version 2)
The Surface Ocean CO2 Atlas (SOCAT), an activity of the international marine carbon research community, provides access to synthesis and gridded fCO2 (fugacity of carbon dioxide) products for the surface oceans. Version 2 of SOCAT is an update of the previous release (version 1) with more data (increased from 6.3 million to 10.1 million surface water fCO2 values) and
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Calcium carbonate corrosivity in an Alaskan inland sea
Ocean acidification is the hydrogen ion increase caused by the oceanic uptake of anthropogenic CO2, and is a focal point in marine biogeochemistry, in part, because this chemical reaction reduces calcium carbonate (CaCO3) saturation states (Ω) to levels that are corrosive (i.e., Ω ≤ 1) to shell-forming marine organisms. However, other processes can drive CaCO3 corrosivity;
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