In the coming decades and centuries, the ocean's biogeochemical cycles and ecosystems will become increasingly stressed by at least three independent factors. Rising temperatures, ocean acidification ...and ocean deoxygenation will cause substantial changes in the physical, chemical and biological environment, which will then affect the ocean's biogeochemical cycles and ecosystems in ways that we are only beginning to fathom. Ocean warming will not only affect organisms and biogeochemical cycles directly, but will also increase upper ocean stratification. The changes in the ocean's carbonate chemistry induced by the uptake of anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) (i.e. ocean acidification) will probably affect many organisms and processes, although in ways that are currently not well understood. Ocean deoxygenation, i.e. the loss of dissolved oxygen (O 2 ) from the ocean, is bound to occur in a warming and more stratified ocean, causing stress to macro-organisms that critically depend on sufficient levels of oxygen. These three stressors—warming, acidification and deoxygenation—will tend to operate globally, although with distinct regional differences. The impacts of ocean acidification tend to be strongest in the high latitudes, whereas the low-oxygen regions of the low latitudes are most vulnerable to ocean deoxygenation. Specific regions, such as the eastern boundary upwelling systems, will be strongly affected by all three stressors, making them potential hotspots for change. Of additional concern are synergistic effects, such as ocean acidification-induced changes in the type and magnitude of the organic matter exported to the ocean's interior, which then might cause substantial changes in the oxygen concentration there. Ocean warming, acidification and deoxygenation are essentially irreversible on centennial time scales, i.e. once these changes have occurred, it will take centuries for the ocean to recover. With the emission of CO 2 being the primary driver behind all three stressors, the primary mitigation strategy is to reduce these emissions.
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Elusive marine nitrogen fixation Gruber, Nicolas
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS,
04/2016, Volume:
113, Issue:
16
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
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Ocean acidification has profoundly altered the ocean's carbonate chemistry since preindustrial times, with potentially serious consequences for marine life. Yet, no long-term, global ...observation-based data set exists that allows us to study changes in ocean acidification for all carbonate system parameters over the last few decades. Here, we fill this gap and present a methodologically consistent global data set of all relevant surface ocean parameters, i.e., dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC), total alkalinity (TA), partial pressure of CO2 (pCO2), pH, and the saturation state with respect to mineral CaCO3 (Ω) at a monthly resolution over the period 1985 through 2018 at a spatial resolution of 1∘×1∘. This data set, named OceanSODA-ETHZ, was created by extrapolating in time and space the surface ocean observations of pCO2 (from the Surface Ocean CO2 Atlas, SOCAT) and total alkalinity (TA; from the Global Ocean Data Analysis Project, GLODAP) using the newly developed Geospatial Random Cluster Ensemble Regression (GRaCER) method (code available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4455354, Gregor, 2021). This method is based on a two-step (cluster-regression) approach but extends it by considering an ensemble of such cluster regressions, leading to improved robustness. Surface ocean DIC, pH, and Ω were then computed from the globally mapped pCO2 and TA using the thermodynamic equations of the carbonate system. For the open ocean, the cluster-regression method estimates pCO2 and TA with global near-zero biases and root mean squared errors of 12 µatm and 13 µmol kg−1, respectively. Taking into account also the measurement and representation errors, the total uncertainty increases to 14 µatm and 21 µmol kg−1, respectively. We assess the fidelity of the computed parameters by comparing them to direct observations from GLODAP, finding surface ocean pH and DIC global biases of near zero, as well as root mean squared errors of 0.023 and 16 µmol kg−1, respectively. These uncertainties are very comparable to those expected by propagating the total uncertainty from pCO2 and TA through the thermodynamic computations, indicating a robust and conservative assessment of the uncertainties. We illustrate the potential of this new data set by analyzing the climatological mean seasonal cycles of the different parameters of the surface ocean carbonate system, highlighting their commonalities and differences. Further, this data set provides a novel constraint on the global- and basin-scale trends in ocean acidification for all parameters. Concretely, we find for the period 1990 through 2018 global mean trends of 8.6 ± 0.1 µmol kg−1 per decade for DIC, −0.016 ± 0.000 per decade for pH, 16.5 ± 0.1 µatm per decade for pCO2, and −0.07 ± 0.00 per decade for Ω. The OceanSODA-ETHZ data can be downloaded from https://doi.org/10.25921/m5wx-ja34 (Gregor and Gruber, 2020).
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The Variable Southern Ocean Carbon Sink Gruber, Nicolas; Landschützer, Peter; Lovenduski, Nicole S
Annual review of marine science,
01/2019, Volume:
11, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
The CO
2
uptake by the Southern Ocean (<35°S) varies substantially on all timescales and is a major determinant of the variations of the global ocean carbon sink. Particularly strong are the decadal ...changes characterized by a weakening period of the Southern Ocean carbon sink in the 1990s and a rebound after 2000. The weakening in the 1990s resulted primarily from a southward shift of the westerlies that enhanced the upwelling and outgassing of respired (i.e., natural) CO
2
. The concurrent reduction in the storage rate of anthropogenic CO
2
in the mode and intermediate waters south of 35°S suggests that this shift also decreased the uptake of anthropogenic CO
2
. The rebound and the subsequent strong, decade-long reinvigoration of the carbon sink appear to have been driven by cooling in the Pacific Ocean, enhanced stratification in the Atlantic and Indian Ocean sectors, and a reduced overturning. Current-generation ocean models generally do not reproduce these variations and are poorly skilled at making decadal predictions in this region.
With humans having an increasing impact on the planet, the interactions between the nitrogen cycle, the carbon cycle and climate are expected to become an increasingly important determinant of the ...Earth system.
Net primary production (NPP) is the foundation of the oceans' ecosystems and the fisheries they support. In the Arctic Ocean, NPP is controlled by a complex interplay of light and nutrients supplied ...by upwelling as well as lateral inflows from adjacent oceans and land. But so far, the role of the input from land by rivers and coastal erosion has not been given much attention. Here, by upscaling observations from the six largest rivers and using measured coastal erosion rates, we construct a pan-Arctic, spatio-temporally resolved estimate of the land input of carbon and nutrients to the Arctic Ocean. Using an ocean-biogeochemical model, we estimate that this input fuels 28-51% of the current annual Arctic Ocean NPP. This strong enhancement of NPP is a consequence of efficient recycling of the land-derived nutrients on the vast Arctic shelves. Our results thus suggest that nutrient input from the land is a key process that will affect the future evolution of Arctic Ocean NPP.
The determination of the decadal change in anthropogenic CO2 in the global ocean from repeat hydrographic surveys represents a formidable challenge, which we address here by introducing a seamless ...new method. This method builds on the extended multiple linear regression (eMLR) approach to identify the anthropogenic CO2 signal, but in order to improve the robustness of this method, we fit C∗ rather than dissolved inorganic carbon and use a probabilistic method for the selection of the predictors. In order to account for the multiyear nature of the surveys, we adjust all C∗ observations of a particular observing period to a common reference year by assuming a transient steady state. We finally use the eMLR models together with global gridded climatological distributions of the predictors to map the estimated change in anthropogenic CO2 to the global ocean. Testing this method with synthetic data generated from a hindcast simulation with an ocean model reveals that the method is able to reconstruct the change in anthropogenic CO2 with only a small global bias (<5%). Within ocean basins, the errors can be larger, mostly driven by changes in ocean circulation. Overall, we conclude from the model that the method has an accuracy of retrieving the column integrated change in anthropogenic CO2 of about ±10% at the scale of whole ocean basins. We expect that this uncertainty needs to be doubled to about ±20% when the change in anthropogenic CO2 is reconstructed from observations.
Plain Language Summary
The determination of the decadal change in anthropogenic CO2 in the global ocean from repeat hydrographic surveys represents a formidable challenge. We address this challenge by proposing a new method that combines elements of previously published methods in a seamless manner. We test this method thoroughly using synthetic data obtained from a global biogeochemical model. These tests reveal that the method is able to retrieve the decadal changes in anthropogenic CO2 with good accuracy on the global and basin scale, that is, within about +/−10%. Larger errors are found at subbasin scales, largely associated with the method having difficulties in dealing with temporal variations in ocean circulation and ocean biogeochemistry. Despite these shortcomings, the method is found to be suitable for the use with real observations.
Key Points
The eMLR(C*) method is designed to estimate the global‐scale change in anthropogenic CO2 (Cant) in the ocean on decadal time scales
Tests with synthetic data show that the method reconstructs the global to basin‐scale changes in Cant well
Biases at regional scales can be larger, primarily where changes in ocean circulation strongly affect Cant
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FZAB, GIS, IJS, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
Abstract
Marine phytoplankton and zooplankton form the basis of the ocean’s food-web, yet the impacts of climate change on their biodiversity are poorly understood. Here, we use an ensemble of ...species distribution models for a total of 336 phytoplankton and 524 zooplankton species to determine their present and future habitat suitability patterns. For the end of this century, under a high emission scenario, we find an overall increase in plankton species richness driven by ocean warming, and a poleward shift of the species’ distributions at a median speed of 35 km/decade. Phytoplankton species richness is projected to increase by more than 16% over most regions except for the Arctic Ocean. In contrast, zooplankton richness is projected to slightly decline in the tropics, but to increase strongly in temperate to subpolar latitudes. In these latitudes, nearly 40% of the phytoplankton and zooplankton assemblages are replaced by poleward shifting species. This implies that climate change threatens the contribution of plankton communities to plankton-mediated ecosystem services such as biological carbon sequestration.
We investigate the variations of the ocean CO2 sink during the past three decades using global surface ocean maps of the partial pressure of CO2 reconstructed from observations contained in the ...Surface Ocean CO2 Atlas Version 2. To create these maps, we used the neural network‐based data interpolation method of Landschützer et al. (2014) but extended the work in time from 1998 to 2011 to the period from 1982 through 2011. Our results suggest strong decadal variations in the global ocean carbon sink around a long‐term increase that corresponds roughly to that expected from the rise in atmospheric CO2. The sink is estimated to have weakened during the 1990s toward a minimum uptake of only −0.8 ± 0.5 Pg C yr−1 in 2000 and thereafter to have strengthened considerably to rates of more than −2.0 ± 0.5 Pg C yr−1. These decadal variations originate mostly from the extratropical oceans, while the tropical regions contribute primarily to interannual variations. Changes in sea surface temperature affecting the solubility of CO2 explain part of these variations, particularly at subtropical latitudes. But most of the higher‐latitude changes are attributed to modifications in the surface concentration of dissolved inorganic carbon and alkalinity, induced by decadal variations in atmospheric forcing, with patterns that are reminiscent of those of the Northern and Southern Annular Modes. These decadal variations lead to a substantially smaller cumulative anthropogenic CO2 uptake of the ocean over the 1982 through 2011 period (reduction of 7.5 ± 5.5 Pg C) relative to that derived by the Global Carbon Budget.
Key Points
Decadal oceanic carbon sink is more variable than previously recognized
Decadal variations mostly originate from extratropics
The cumulative carbon uptake over 30 years is smaller than suggested by previous studies
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Recent salinity changes in the Southern Ocean are among the most prominent signals of climate change in the global ocean, yet their underlying causes have not been firmly established. Here we propose ...that trends in the northward transport of Antarctic sea ice are a major contributor to these changes. Using satellite observations supplemented by sea-ice reconstructions, we estimate that wind-driven northward freshwater transport by sea ice increased by 20 ± 10 per cent between 1982 and 2008. The strongest and most robust increase occurred in the Pacific sector, coinciding with the largest observed salinity changes. We estimate that the additional freshwater for the entire northern sea-ice edge entails a freshening rate of -0.02 ± 0.01 grams per kilogram per decade in the surface and intermediate waters of the open ocean, similar to the observed freshening. The enhanced rejection of salt near the coast of Antarctica associated with stronger sea-ice export counteracts the freshening of both continental shelf and newly formed bottom waters due to increases in glacial meltwater. Although the data sources underlying our results have substantial uncertainties, regional analyses and independent data from an atmospheric reanalysis support our conclusions. Our finding that northward sea-ice freshwater transport is also a key determinant of the mean salinity distribution in the Southern Ocean further underpins the importance of the sea-ice-induced freshwater flux. Through its influence on the density structure of the ocean, this process has critical consequences for the global climate by affecting the exchange of heat, carbon and nutrients between the deep ocean and surface waters.
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