A Lagrangian study of the contribution of the Canary coastal upwelling to the nitrogen budget of the open North Atlantic ...

• Main Authors: Hailegeorgis, Derara, Lachkar, Zouhair, Rieper, Christoph, Gruber, Nicolas
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: ETH Zurich 2021
• Subjects: North Atlantic
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.3929/ethz-b-000466505; http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11850/466505

The Canary Current System (CanCS) is a major eastern boundary upwelling system (EBUS), known for its high nearshore productivity and for sustaining a large fishery. It is also an important but not well quantified source of nitrogen to the adjacent oligotrophic subtropical gyre of the North Atlantic. Here, we use a Lagrangian modeling approach to quantify this offshore transport and investigate its timescales, reach and contribution to the fueling of productivity in the offshore regions. In our Lagrangian model, we release nearly 10 million particles off the northwestern African coast and then track all those that enter the nearshore region and upwell along the coast between 14 and 35g N. We then follow them as they are transported offshore, also tracking the biogeochemical transformations, permitting us to construct biogeochemical budgets along the offshore moving particles. The three-dimensional velocity field as well as the biogeochemical tracers and fluxes are taken from an eddy-resolving configuration of ... : Biogeosciences, 18 (1) ...