Influence of Seasonal Variability in Flux Attenuation on Global Organic Carbon Fluxes and Nutrient Distributions.

The biological carbon pump is a key component of the marine carbon cycle. This surface-to-deep flux of carbon is usually assumed to follow a simple power law function, which imposes that the surface export flux is attenuated throughout subsurface waters at a rate dictated by the parameterization exponent. This flux attenuation exponent is widely assumed as constant. However, there is increasing evidence that the flux attenuation varies both spatially and seasonally. While the former has received some attention, the consequences of the latter have not been explored. Here we aim to fill the gap with a theoretical study of how seasonal changes in both flux attenuation and sinking speed affect nutrient distributions and carbon fluxes. Using a global ocean-biogeochemical model that represents detritus explicitly, we look at different scenarios for how these varies seasonally, particularly the relative "phase" with respect to solar radiation and the "strength" of seasonality. We show that the sole presence of seasonality in the model-imposed flux attenuation and sinking speed leads to a greater transfer efficiency compared to the non-seasonal flux attenuation scenario, resulting in an increase of over 140% in some cases when the amplitude of the seasonality imposed is 60% of the non-seasonal base value. This work highlights the importance of the feedback taking place between the seasonally varying flux attenuation, sinking speed and other processes, suggesting that the assumption of constant-in-time flux attenuation and sinking speed might underestimate how much carbon is sequestered by the biological carbon pump.

The biological carbon pump in CMIP6 models: 21st century trends and uncertainties.

The biological carbon pump (BCP) stores ∼1,700 Pg C from the atmosphere in the ocean interior, but the magnitude and direction of future changes in carbon sequestration by the BCP are uncertain. We quantify global trends in export production, sinking organic carbon fluxes, and sequestered carbon in the latest Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) future projections, finding a consistent 19 to 48 Pg C increase in carbon sequestration over the 21st century for the SSP3-7.0 scenario, equivalent to 5 to 17% of the total increase of carbon in the ocean by 2100. This is in contrast to a global decrease in export production of -0.15 to -1.44 Pg C y-1. However, there is significant uncertainty in the modeled future fluxes of organic carbon to the deep ocean associated with a range of different processes resolved across models. We demonstrate that organic carbon fluxes at 1,000 m are a good predictor of long-term carbon sequestration and suggest this is an important metric of the BCP that should be prioritized in future model studies.

Nonlinear stability of two-layer shallow water flows with a free surface.

The problem of two layers of immiscible fluid, bordered above by an unbounded layer of passive fluid and below by a flat bed, is formulated and discussed. The resulting equations are given by a first-order, four-dimensional system of PDEs of mixed-type. The relevant physical parameters in the problem are presented and used to write the equations in a non-dimensional form. The conservation laws for the problem, which are known to be only six, are explicitly written and discussed in both non-Boussinesq and Boussinesq cases. Both dynamics and nonlinear stability of the Cauchy problem are discussed, with focus on the case where the upper unbounded passive layer has zero density, also called the free surface case. We prove that the stability of a solution depends only on two 'baroclinic' parameters (the shear and the difference of layer thickness, the former being the most important one) and give a precise criterion for the system to be well-posed. It is also numerically shown that the system is nonlinearly unstable, as hyperbolic initial data evolves into the elliptic region before the formation of shocks. We also discuss the use of simple waves as a tool to bound solutions and preventing a hyperbolic initial data to become elliptic and use this idea to give a mathematical proof for the nonlinear instability.