Data used in "The Complex Role of Storms in Modulating Air-Sea CO2 Fluxes in the sub-Antarctic Southern Ocean"

The data included in this repository were used to generate the figures for the paper "The Complex Role of Storms in Modulating Air-Sea CO2 Fluxes in the sub-Antarctic Southern Ocean" in Geophysical Research Letter. Abstract: "The intra-seasonal CO 2 flux (FCO 2 ) variability across th...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Toolsee, Tesha, Nicholson, Sarah, Monteiro, Pedro M. S.
Format: Other/Unknown Material
Language:English
Published: Zenodo 2023
Subjects:
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10389978
Description
Summary:The data included in this repository were used to generate the figures for the paper "The Complex Role of Storms in Modulating Air-Sea CO2 Fluxes in the sub-Antarctic Southern Ocean" in Geophysical Research Letter. Abstract: "The intra-seasonal CO 2 flux (FCO 2 ) variability across the Southern Ocean is poorly understood due to sparse observations at the required temporal and spatial scales. Twinned Waveglider-Seaglider experiments were used to investigate how storms influence FCO 2 through both the gas transfer velocity (k w ) and the air-sea gradient in partial pressure of CO 2 (ΔpCO 2 ) in the sub-Antarctic zone. Winter-spring storms caused ΔpCO 2 to weaken (by 15-55 μatm) due to mixing/entrainment and weaker stratification. This response in ΔpCO 2 was in phase with k w resulting in a counteractive weakening in FCO 2 (by 6.6 - 26.5% per storm), despite the wind-driven increase in k w . Stronger stratification during summer explained the weaker sensitivity of ΔpCO 2 to storms, instead its thermal drivers dominated the ΔpCO 2 variability. These results highlight the importance of observing synoptic-scale variability in ΔpCO 2 , the absence of which may propagate significant biases to the mean annual FCO 2 estimates from large-scale observing programmes and reconstructions." The data collected from the Wave Glider, such as the concentration of CO 2 in the atmosphere (xCO 2air ) and in the ocean (xCO 2sea ), surface temperature and salinity were used to calculate the different parameters of the bulk CO 2 flux formula (FCO 2 = k w x ko x ΔpCO 2 ). Note that the meteorological weather station of one of the Wave Gliders was faulty and the wind speed, wind direction and wind stress data was replaced by hourly ERA5 data provided by ECMWF available at https://doi.org/10.24381/cds.bd0915c6 . The temperature, pressure and salinity data collected by the Seaglider were used to calculate the Mixed Layer Depth and the Brunt Vaisala Frequency of the first 300m of the ocean.