Negligible direct radiative forcing of basin‐scale climate by coccolithophore blooms

The water-leaving radiance, defined as radiation from the sun reflected off particles in water and exiting the ocean surface back into the atmosphere and space, is often used to derive ocean-colour information from remotely sensed data. However, it is in itself a measure of the amount of solar irrad...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Geophysical Research Letters
Main Authors: Gondwe, M., Klaassen, Wim, Gieskes, Winfried, de Baar, Hein
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: 2001
Subjects:
CENTRAL NORTH-ATLANTIC
BACKSCATTERING
RADIANCE
OPTICAL-PROPERTIES
ATTENUATION
maine
model
SCATTERING
CELLS
North Atlantic
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/11370/c33db540-1ee4-4c00-86c5-be45f1e2f213
https://research.rug.nl/en/publications/c33db540-1ee4-4c00-86c5-be45f1e2f213
https://doi.org/10.1029/2001GL012989
https://pure.rug.nl/ws/files/66762269/Gondwe_et_al_2001_Geophysical_Research_Letters.pdf
Description
Summary:The water-leaving radiance, defined as radiation from the sun reflected off particles in water and exiting the ocean surface back into the atmosphere and space, is often used to derive ocean-colour information from remotely sensed data. However, it is in itself a measure of the amount of solar irradiance reflected by oceanic constituents and, therefore, not available to the Earth's heat reservoir (changes in which can affect the Earth's energy balance and climate). A strong influence on the water-leaving radiance is observed from coccolithophore blooms, owing to the highly reflective calcareous platelets or coccoliths covering these marine algae. We analysed remotely sensed water-leaving radiances (1998-1999) over the N. Atlantic, where the blooms are spatially and temporally most abundant, and found that the direct radiative forcing of climate between 402-565 nm (the major range of optical influence) by coccolithophores in this ocean is negligible (similar to0.05 W m(-2) mean annually). This is in contrast to what in situ or laboratory measurements on the immense local intensity of coccolithophore visible light scatter in the past two decades have led us to believe.

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