Publication Date:
2022-05-25
Description:
Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2012. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Geophysical Research Letters 39 (2012): L15610, doi:10.1029/2012GL052980.
Description:
The role of biominerals in driving carbon export from the surface ocean is unclear. We compiled surface particulate organic carbon (POC), and mineral ballast export fluxes from 55 different locations in the Atlantic and Southern Oceans. Substantial surface POC export accompanied by negligible mineral export was recorded implying that association with mineral phases is not a precondition for organic export to occur. The proportion of non-mineral associated sinking POC ranged from 0 to 80% and was highest in areas previously shown to be dominated by diatoms. This is consistent with previous estimates showing that transfer efficiency in such regions is low. However we propose that, rather than the low transfer efficiency arising from diatom blooms being inherently characterized by poorly packaged aggregates which are efficiently exported but which disintegrate readily in mid water, it is due to such environments having very high levels of unballasted organic C export.
Description:
This work is part of
the lead author’s doctoral research and was supported by the CalMarO program,
(E.U, grant agreement 215157) and by the U.K. Ocean 2025 program.
Description:
2013-03-11
Keywords:
234Th
;
POC
;
Ballast
;
Particles export
Repository Name:
Woods Hole Open Access Server
Type:
Article
Format:
application/pdf
Format:
text/plain
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