The North Atlantic biological pump : insights from the Ocean Observatories Initiative Irminger Sea Array

• Published in: Oceanography
• Main Authors: Palevsky, Hilary I., Nicholson, David P.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: The Oceanography Society 2018
• Subjects: Irminger Sea; North Atlantic
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/1912/10229

Author Posting. © The Oceanography Society, 2018. This article is posted here by permission of The Oceanography Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Oceanography 31, no. 1 (2018): 42–49, doi:10.5670/oceanog.2018.108. The biological pump plays a key role in the global carbon cycle by transporting photosynthetically fixed organic carbon into the deep ocean, where it can be sequestered from the atmosphere over annual or longer time scales if exported below the winter ventilation depth. In the subpolar North Atlantic, carbon sequestration via the biological pump is influenced by two competing forces: a spring diatom bloom that features large, fast-sinking biogenic particles, and deep winter mixing that requires particles to sink much further than in other ocean regions to escape winter ventilation. We synthesize biogeochemical sensor data from the first two years of operations at the Ocean Observatories Initiative Irminger Sea Array of moorings and gliders (September 2014–July 2016), providing the first simultaneous year-round observations of biological carbon cycling processes in both the surface ocean and the seasonal thermocline in this critical but previously undersampled region. These data show significant mixed layer net autotrophy during the spring bloom and significant respiration in the seasonal thermocline during the stratified season (~5.9 mol C m–2 remineralized between 200 m and 1,000 m). This respired carbon is subsequently ventilated during winter convective mixing (>1,000 m), a significant reduction in potential carbon sequestration. This highlights the importance of year-round observations to accurately constrain the biological pump in the subpolar North Atlantic, as well as other high-latitude regions that experience deep winter mixing. Hilary Palevsky acknowledges support from the Postdoctoral Scholar Program at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, with funding provided by the Weston Howland Jr. Postdoctoral Scholarship.