ALBERT

Description: © The Author(s), 2022. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Pasquier, B., Hines, S. K., Liang, H., Wu, Y., Goldstein, S. L., & John, S. G. GNOM v1.0: an optimized steady-state model of the modern marine neodymium cycle. Geoscientific Model Development, 15(11), (2022): 4625–4656. https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-15-4625-2022.

Description: Spatially distant sources of neodymium (Nd) to the ocean that carry different isotopic signatures (εNd) have been shown to trace out major water masses and have thus been extensively used to study large-scale features of the ocean circulation both past and current. While the global marine Nd cycle is qualitatively well understood, a complete quantitative determination of all its components and mechanisms, such as the magnitude of its sources and the paradoxical conservative behavior of εNd, remains elusive. To make sense of the increasing collection of observational Nd and εNd data, in this model description paper we present and describe the Global Neodymium Ocean Model (GNOM) v1.0, the first inverse model of the global marine biogeochemical cycle of Nd. The GNOM is embedded in a data-constrained steady-state circulation that affords spectacular computational efficiency, which we leverage to perform systematic objective optimization, allowing us to make preliminary estimates of biogeochemical parameters. Owing to its matrix representation, the GNOM model is additionally amenable to novel diagnostics that allow us to investigate open questions about the Nd cycle with unprecedented accuracy. This model is open-source and freely accessible, is written in Julia, and its code is easily understandable and modifiable for further community developments, refinements, and experiments.

Description: This work has been supported by the Simons Foundation (grant no. 426570SP to Seth G. John), the National Science Foundation (grant no. OCE-1736896 to Seth G. John and grant no. OCE-1831415 to Steven L. Goldstein and Sophia K. V. Hines), the Investment in Science Fund at WHOI and the John E. and Anne W. Sawyer Endowed Fund in Support of Scientific Staff (Sophia K. V. Hines), and the Storke Endowment of the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Columbia University (Steven L. Goldstein).

Description: © The Author(s), 2021. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Phillips, H. E., Tandon, A., Furue, R., Hood, R., Ummenhofer, C. C., Benthuysen, J. A., Menezes, V., Hu, S., Webber, B., Sanchez-Franks, A., Cherian, D., Shroyer, E., Feng, M., Wijesekera, H., Chatterjee, A., Yu, L., Hermes, J., Murtugudde, R., Tozuka, T., Su, D., Singh, A., Centurioni, L., Prakash, S., Wiggert, J. Progress in understanding of Indian Ocean circulation, variability, air-sea exchange, and impacts on biogeochemistry. Ocean Science, 17(6), (2021): 1677–1751, https://doi.org/10.5194/os-17-1677-2021.

Description: Over the past decade, our understanding of the Indian Ocean has advanced through concerted efforts toward measuring the ocean circulation and air–sea exchanges, detecting changes in water masses, and linking physical processes to ecologically important variables. New circulation pathways and mechanisms have been discovered that control atmospheric and oceanic mean state and variability. This review brings together new understanding of the ocean–atmosphere system in the Indian Ocean since the last comprehensive review, describing the Indian Ocean circulation patterns, air–sea interactions, and climate variability. Coordinated international focus on the Indian Ocean has motivated the application of new technologies to deliver higher-resolution observations and models of Indian Ocean processes. As a result we are discovering the importance of small-scale processes in setting the large-scale gradients and circulation, interactions between physical and biogeochemical processes, interactions between boundary currents and the interior, and interactions between the surface and the deep ocean. A newly discovered regional climate mode in the southeast Indian Ocean, the Ningaloo Niño, has instigated more regional air–sea coupling and marine heatwave research in the global oceans. In the last decade, we have seen rapid warming of the Indian Ocean overlaid with extremes in the form of marine heatwaves. These events have motivated studies that have delivered new insight into the variability in ocean heat content and exchanges in the Indian Ocean and have highlighted the critical role of the Indian Ocean as a clearing house for anthropogenic heat. This synthesis paper reviews the advances in these areas in the last decade.

Description: Helen E. Phillips acknowledges support from the Earth Systems and Climate Change Hub and Climate Systems Hub of the Australian Government's National Environmental Science Programme and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes. Amit Tandon acknowledges the US Office of Naval Research. This is INCOIS contribution no. 437.

Description: © The Author(s), 2022. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Scully, M. E., Geyer, W. R., Borkman, D., Pugh, T. L., Costa, A., & Nichols, O. C. Unprecedented summer hypoxia in southern Cape Cod Bay: an ecological response to regional climate change? Biogeosciences, 19(14), (2022): 3523–3536, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-19-3523-2022.

Description: In late summer 2019 and 2020 bottom waters in southern Cape Cod Bay (CCB) became depleted of dissolved oxygen (DO), with documented benthic mortality in both years. Hypoxic conditions formed in relatively shallow water where the strong seasonal thermocline intersected the sea floor, both limiting vertical mixing and concentrating biological oxygen demand (BOD) over a very thin bottom boundary layer. In both 2019 and 2020, anomalously high sub-surface phytoplankton blooms were observed, and the biomass from these blooms provided the fuel to deplete sub-pycnocline waters of DO. The increased chlorophyll fluorescence was accompanied by a corresponding decrease in sub-pycnocline nutrients, suggesting that prior to 2019 physical conditions were unfavorable for the utilization of these deep nutrients by the late-summer phytoplankton community. It is hypothesized that significant alteration of physical conditions in CCB during late summer, which is the result of regional climate change, has favored the recent increase in sub-surface phytoplankton production. These changes include rapidly warming waters and significant shifts in summer wind direction, both of which impact the intensity and vertical distribution of thermal stratification and vertical mixing within the water column. These changes in water column structure are not only more susceptible to hypoxia but also have significant implications for phytoplankton dynamics, potentially allowing for intense late-summer blooms of Karenia mikimotoi, a species new to the area. K. mikimotoi had not been detected in CCB or adjacent waters prior to 2017; however, increasing cell densities have been reported in subsequent years, consistent with a rapidly changing ecosystem.

Description: This research has been supported by the National Science Foundation (grant no. OCE-2053240) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (grant no. NA20OAR4170506).