| Summary: | Memoria de tesis doctoral presentada por Elisa Fernández Guallart para obtener el título de Doctora en Oceanografía por la Universidad de las Palmas de Gran Canaria (ULPGC), realizada bajo la dirección del Dr. Carles Pelejero Bou del Institut de Ciències del Mar (ICM-CSIC) y del Dr. Fiz Fernández Pérez del Instituto de Investigaciones Marinas (IIM-CSIC).-- 279 pages [EN] The ocean carbon sink contributes to mitigate global warming. However, the resulting anthropogenic CO2 (C ant) oceanic invasion affects the chemical balances of the CO system in seawater, which translates into a decrease in surface ocean pH. The North Atlantic Ocean presents the largest Cant storage rate of all oceans. The key mechanism contributing to this high value is the northward transport of warm tropical and subtropical waters that contain high Cant concentrations from low latitudes poleward into the regions of deep water formation, through the upper limb of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation. These deep waters return southward into the Deep Western Boundary Current (DWBC) containing moderate but increasing Cant levels. Given the predominant part of the (sub)tropical North Atlantic region in the uptake of atmospheric Cant , the anthropogenically derived acidification and taking into account the role of ocean circulation on the distribution of the absorbed Cant between basins, this thesis assesses de decadal changes and trends in some parameters of the carbonate system along two oceanographic sections located at 24.5°N and at 7.5°N of latitude, occurred between the early 1990s and the early 2010s. We assessed the interactions between ocean circulation and the carbonate system, in particular regarding the processes that control and modulate the storage rates of Cant and the associated acidification. This was accomplished by splitting the water masses present in each of the two sections into separated zonal regions that were defined following oceanographic criteria. This methodological approach showed that the spatiotemporal ...
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