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The Subtropical Ocean's Biological Carbon Pump Determined From O 2 and DIC/DI 13 C Tracers
Author(s) -
Yang Bo,
Emerson Steven R.,
Quay Paul D.
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1029/2018gl081239
Subject(s) - ocean gyre , subtropics , biological pump , flux (metallurgy) , carbon fibers , dissolved organic carbon , atmospheric sciences , oceanography , southern hemisphere , environmental science , atmosphere (unit) , carbon dioxide , northern hemisphere , chemistry , carbon cycle , climatology , geology , ecology , physics , biology , meteorology , materials science , organic chemistry , ecosystem , composite number , composite material
The ocean's biological organic carbon pump regulates the p CO 2 of the atmosphere and helps maintain the oxygen distributions in the ocean. Global models of this flux are poorly verified with observations. We used upper‐ocean budgets of O 2 and the 13 C/ 12 C of dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) to estimate the biological pump in the subtropical gyres. These two tracers yield, within errors, similar result (~2.0 mol C·m −2 ·year −1 ) at three Northern Hemisphere subtropical locations. Values for three Southern Hemisphere subtropical regions are lower and more variable determined by the O 2 mass balance than by the DI 13 C method (−0.5 to 0.8 mol C·m −2 ·year −1 and 0.9 to 1.3 mol C·m −2 ·year −1 , respectively). Both methods suggest that the subtropical ocean is, on the whole, autotropic. The gas exchange residence times of O 2 and dissolved inorganic carbon result in different spatial and temporal averaging creating complementary tracers for biological pump model verification.