On the long-range offshore transport of organic carbon from the Canary Upwelling System to the open North Atlantic ...
A compilation of measurements of net community production (NCP) in the upper waters of the eastern subtropical North Atlantic had suggested net heterotrophic conditions, purportedly supported by the lateral export of organic carbon from the adjacent, highly productive Canary Upwelling System (CanUS)...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Article in Journal/Newspaper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
ETH Zurich
2017
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://dx.doi.org/10.3929/ethz-b-000190480 http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11850/190480 |
| Summary: | A compilation of measurements of net community production (NCP) in the upper waters of the eastern subtropical North Atlantic had suggested net heterotrophic conditions, purportedly supported by the lateral export of organic carbon from the adjacent, highly productive Canary Upwelling System (CanUS). Here, we quantify and assess this lateral export using the Regional Ocean Modeling System (ROMS) coupled to a nutrient, phytoplankton, zooplankton, and detritus (NPZD) ecosystem model. We employ a new Atlantic telescopic grid with a strong refinement towards the northwestern African shelf to combine an eddy-resolving resolution in the CanUS with a full Atlantic basin perspective. Our climatologically forced simulation reveals an intense offshore flux of organic carbon that transports about 19 Tg C yr−1 away from the nearshore 100 km over the whole CanUS, amounting to more than a third of the NCP in this region. The offshore transport extends beyond 1500 km into the subtropical North Atlantic, adding organic ... : Biogeosciences, 14 (13) ... |
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