Efficient dissolved organic carbon production and export in the oligotrophic ocean

Biologically fixed carbon is transferred from the surface to deep ocean as sinking particles or dissolved organic carbon (DOC). DOC is estimated to account for ~20% of global export production, but the degree to which this varies regionally has not been assessed at a global scale. Here we present the first observationally based global-scale assessment of DOC production and export, obtained by combining an artificial neural network estimate of the global DOC distribution, and a data-constrained ocean circulation model. Our results demonstrate that the efficiency of DOC production and export varies more than threefold across oceanographic regions. DOC production and export display a pronounced peak in the oligotrophic subtropical oceans, where DOC accounts for roughly half of the total organic carbon export. These stratified nutrient-depleted regions are expected to expand with future warming, amplifying the role of DOC in the biological pump, and magnifying the need to improve DOC cycling in climate models.The degree of regional variability in marine dissolved organic carbon (DOC) export production is poorly constrained on a global scale. Here, the authors combine an artificial neural network and a data-constrained ocean circulation model to show that the efficiency of DOC export varies 3-fold across regions.

• Publication year

  2017

• Venue

  Nature Communications

• Publication date

  2017-12-11

• Fields of study

  Medicine, Environmental Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1038/s41467-017-02227-3PMID 29230041PMCID 5725454
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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