OCB Science Highlights

OCB Science Highlights

If you would like to have your recent publications featured on the OCB website and eNewsletter please contact ocb_news@whoi.edu. View our guidelines for writing a OCB Science Highlight.

Ice sheets mobilize trace elements for export downstream

January7,2021

Trace elements are essential micronutrients for life in the ocean and also serve as valuable fingerprints of chemical weathering. The behaviour of trace elements in the ocean has gained interest because some of these elements are found at vanishingly low concentrations that limit ecosystem productivity. Despite delivering >2000 km3 yr-1 of freshwater to the polar […]

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When GEOTRACES‐based synthesis efforts improve global iron-cycling understanding

December18,2020

Authors of a recent paper published in Global Biogeochemical Cycles conducted a detailed study of the residence times of total and dissolved iron (Fe) in the upper layers (0-250m) of the global ocean. Using historical (1980-2007) and recent GEOTRACES data, they compiled an impressive data set comprising dissolved, filtered and trap-collected particulate Fe spanning different […]

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Partitioning carbon export into particulate and dissolved pools from biogeochemical profiling float observations

December17,2020

Carbon export from the surface into the deep ocean via the biological pump is a significant sink for atmospheric carbon dioxide. The relative contributions of sinking particles—particulate organic carbon (POC) and dissolved organic carbon (DOC)—to the total export affect the efficiency of carbon export. In a recent study published in Global Biogeochemical Cycles, the authors […]

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How zooplankton control carbon export in the Southern Ocean

December3,2020

The Southern Ocean exhibits an inverse relationship between surface primary production and export flux out of the euphotic zone. The causes of this production-export decoupling are still under debate. A recently published mini review in Frontiers in Marine Science focused on zooplankton, an important component of Southern Ocean food webs and the biological pump. The […]

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Water clarity impacts temperature and biogeochemistry in Chesapeake Bay

December3,2020

Estuarine water clarity is determined by suspended materials in the water, including colored dissolved organic matter, phytoplankton, sediment, and detritus. These constituents directly affect temperature because when water is opaque, sunlight heats only the shallowest layers near the surface, but when water is clear, sunlight can penetrate deeper, warming the waters below the surface. Despite […]

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Tiny phytoplankton seen from space

November19,2020

Picophytoplankton, the smallest phytoplankton on Earth, are dominant in over half of the global surface ocean, growing in low-nutrient “ocean deserts” where diatoms and other large phytoplankton have difficult to thrive. Despite their small size, picophytoplankton collectively account for well over 50% of primary production in oligotrophic waters, thus playing a major role in sustaining […]

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A new Regional Earth System Model of the Mediterranean Sea biogeochemical dynamics

November19,2020

The Mediterranean Sea is a semi-enclosed mid-latitude oligotrophic basin with a lower net primary production than the global ocean. A west-east productivity trophic gradient results from the superposition of biogeochemical and physical processes, including the biological pump and associated carbon and nutrient (nitrogen, phosphorus) fluxes, the spatial asymmetric distribution of nutrient sources (rivers, atmospheric deposition, […]

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Warming counteracts acidification in temperate crustose coralline algae communities

November6,2020

Seawater carbonate chemistry has been altered by dramatic increases in anthropogenic CO2 release and global temperatures, leading to significant changes in rocky shore habitats and the metabolism of most marine organisms. There has been recent interest in how these anthropogenic stresses affect crustose coralline algae (CCA) communities because CCA photosynthesis and calcification are directly influenced […]

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Timing matters: Correcting float-based measurements of diurnal oxygen variability

November6,2020

Despite its fundamental importance to the global carbon cycle, climate, and marine ecosystems, oceanic primary production is grossly under-sampled. Autonomous platforms represent an important frontier for expanding measurements of marine primary productivity in time and space, but this requires the establishment of robust, standardized methods to obtain reliable data from these platforms. Using data from […]

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Austral summer vertical migration patterns in Antarctic zooplankton

October15,2020

Sunrise and sunset are the main cues driving zooplankton diel vertical migration (DVM) throughout the world’s oceans. These marine animals balance the trade-off between feeding in surface waters at night and avoiding predation during the day at depth. Near-constant daylight during polar summer was assumed to dampen these daily migrations. In a recent paper published […]

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