Sustenance of phytoplankton in the subpolar North Atlantic during the winter through patchiness
This study investigates the influence of two factors that change the mixed layer depth and can potentially contribute to the phytoplankton sustenance over winter: 1) variability of air-sea fluxes and 2) three-dimensional processes arising from strong fronts. To study the role of these factors, we pe...
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ftdatacite:10.48550/arxiv.1711.06880 2023-05-15T17:35:29+02:00 Sustenance of phytoplankton in the subpolar North Atlantic during the winter through patchiness Karimpour, Farid Tandon, Amit Mahadevan, Amala 2017 https://dx.doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.1711.06880 https://arxiv.org/abs/1711.06880 unknown arXiv https://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2017jc013639 arXiv.org perpetual, non-exclusive license http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/ Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics physics.ao-ph FOS Physical sciences article-journal Article ScholarlyArticle Text 2017 ftdatacite https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.1711.06880 https://doi.org/10.1029/2017jc013639 2022-04-01T10:16:43Z This study investigates the influence of two factors that change the mixed layer depth and can potentially contribute to the phytoplankton sustenance over winter: 1) variability of air-sea fluxes and 2) three-dimensional processes arising from strong fronts. To study the role of these factors, we perform several three-dimensional numerical simulations forced with air-sea fluxes at different temporal averaging frequencies as well as different spatial resolutions. Results show that in the winter, when the average mixed layer is much deeper than the euphotic layer and the days are short, phytoplankton production is relatively insensitive to the high-frequency variability in air-sea fluxes. The duration of upper ocean stratification due to high-frequency variability in air-sea fluxes is short and hence has a small impact on phytoplankton production. On the other hand, slumping of fronts creates patchy, stratified, shallow regions that persist considerably longer than stratification caused by changes in air-sea fluxes. Simulations show that before spring warming, the average MLD with fronts is about 700 m shallower than the average MLD without fronts. Therefore, fronts increase the residence time of phytoplankton in the euphotic layer and contribute to phytoplankton growth. Results show that before the spring warming, the depth-integrated phytoplankton concentration is about twice as large as phytoplankton concentration when there are no fronts. Hence, fronts are important for setting the MLD and sustaining phytoplankton in the winter. Model results also show that higher numerical resolution leads to stronger restratification, shallower mixed layers, greater variability in the MLD and higher production of phytoplankton. Text North Atlantic DataCite Metadata Store (German National Library of Science and Technology) |
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topic |
Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics physics.ao-ph FOS Physical sciences |
spellingShingle |
Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics physics.ao-ph FOS Physical sciences Karimpour, Farid Tandon, Amit Mahadevan, Amala Sustenance of phytoplankton in the subpolar North Atlantic during the winter through patchiness |
topic_facet |
Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics physics.ao-ph FOS Physical sciences |
description |
This study investigates the influence of two factors that change the mixed layer depth and can potentially contribute to the phytoplankton sustenance over winter: 1) variability of air-sea fluxes and 2) three-dimensional processes arising from strong fronts. To study the role of these factors, we perform several three-dimensional numerical simulations forced with air-sea fluxes at different temporal averaging frequencies as well as different spatial resolutions. Results show that in the winter, when the average mixed layer is much deeper than the euphotic layer and the days are short, phytoplankton production is relatively insensitive to the high-frequency variability in air-sea fluxes. The duration of upper ocean stratification due to high-frequency variability in air-sea fluxes is short and hence has a small impact on phytoplankton production. On the other hand, slumping of fronts creates patchy, stratified, shallow regions that persist considerably longer than stratification caused by changes in air-sea fluxes. Simulations show that before spring warming, the average MLD with fronts is about 700 m shallower than the average MLD without fronts. Therefore, fronts increase the residence time of phytoplankton in the euphotic layer and contribute to phytoplankton growth. Results show that before the spring warming, the depth-integrated phytoplankton concentration is about twice as large as phytoplankton concentration when there are no fronts. Hence, fronts are important for setting the MLD and sustaining phytoplankton in the winter. Model results also show that higher numerical resolution leads to stronger restratification, shallower mixed layers, greater variability in the MLD and higher production of phytoplankton. |
format |
Text |
author |
Karimpour, Farid Tandon, Amit Mahadevan, Amala |
author_facet |
Karimpour, Farid Tandon, Amit Mahadevan, Amala |
author_sort |
Karimpour, Farid |
title |
Sustenance of phytoplankton in the subpolar North Atlantic during the winter through patchiness |
title_short |
Sustenance of phytoplankton in the subpolar North Atlantic during the winter through patchiness |
title_full |
Sustenance of phytoplankton in the subpolar North Atlantic during the winter through patchiness |
title_fullStr |
Sustenance of phytoplankton in the subpolar North Atlantic during the winter through patchiness |
title_full_unstemmed |
Sustenance of phytoplankton in the subpolar North Atlantic during the winter through patchiness |
title_sort |
sustenance of phytoplankton in the subpolar north atlantic during the winter through patchiness |
publisher |
arXiv |
publishDate |
2017 |
url |
https://dx.doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.1711.06880 https://arxiv.org/abs/1711.06880 |
genre |
North Atlantic |
genre_facet |
North Atlantic |
op_relation |
https://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2017jc013639 |
op_rights |
arXiv.org perpetual, non-exclusive license http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/ |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.1711.06880 https://doi.org/10.1029/2017jc013639 |
_version_ |
1766134668579569664 |