Impact of enhanced vertical mixing on marine biogeochemistry: lessons for geo-engineering and natural variability
International audience Artificially enhanced vertical mixing has been suggested as a means by which to fertilize the biological pump with subsurface nutrients and thus increase the oceanic CO 2 sink. We use an ocean general circulation and biogeo-chemistry model (OGCBM) to examine the impact of arti...
Published in: | Biogeosciences |
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Main Authors: | , , |
Other Authors: | , , , , , , , , |
Format: | Article in Journal/Newspaper |
Language: | English |
Published: |
HAL CCSD
2009
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Subjects: | |
Online Access: | https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01109181 https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01109181/document https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01109181/file/Dutreuil%20Bopp%20Tagliabue%20-%20Biogeosciences%2009%20-%20impact.pdf https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-6-901-2009 |
Summary: | International audience Artificially enhanced vertical mixing has been suggested as a means by which to fertilize the biological pump with subsurface nutrients and thus increase the oceanic CO 2 sink. We use an ocean general circulation and biogeo-chemistry model (OGCBM) to examine the impact of arti-ficially enhanced vertical mixing on biological productivity and atmospheric CO 2 , as well as the climatically significant gases nitrous oxide (N 2 O) and dimethyl sulphide (DMS) dur-ing simulations between 2000 and 2020. Overall, we find a large increase in the amount of organic carbon exported from surface waters, but an overall increase in atmospheric CO 2 concentrations by 2020. We quantified the individual effect of changes in dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC), alka-linity and biological production on the change in pCO 2 at characteristic sites and found the increased vertical supply of carbon rich subsurface water to be primarily responsible for the enhanced CO 2 outgassing, although increased alkalinity and, to a lesser degree, biological production can compensate in some regions. While ocean-atmosphere fluxes of DMS do increase slightly, which might reduce radiative forcing, the oceanic N 2 O source also expands. Our study has impli-cations for understanding how natural variability in vertical mixing in different ocean regions (such as that observed re-cently in the Southern Ocean) can impact the ocean CO 2 sink via changes in DIC, alkalinity and carbon export. |
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