Sensitivity of global warming to carbon emissions: effects of heat and carbon uptake in a suite of Earth system models

Climate projections reveal global-mean surface warming increasing nearly linearly with cumulative carbon emissions. The sensitivity of surface warming to carbon emissions is interpreted in terms of a product of three terms: the dependence of surface warming on radiative forcing, the fractional radiative forcing from CO2, and the dependence of radiative forcing from CO2 on carbon emissions. Mechanistically each term varies, respectively, with climate sensitivity and ocean heat uptake, radiative forcing contributions, and ocean and terrestrial carbon uptake. The sensitivity of surface warming to fossil-fuel carbon emissions is examined using an ensemble of Earth system models, forced either by an annual increase in atmospheric CO2 or by RCPs until year 2100. The sensitivity of surface warming to carbon emissions is controlled by a temporal decrease in the dependence of radiative forcing from CO2 on carbon emissions, which is partly offset by a temporal increase in the dependence of surface warming on radiative forcing. The decrease in the dependence of radiative forcing from CO2 is due to a decline in the ratio of the global ocean carbon undersaturation to carbon emissions, while the increase in the dependence of surface warming is due to a decline in the ratio of ocean heat uptake to radiative forcing. At the present time, there are large intermodel differences in the sensitivity in surface warming to carbon emissions, which are mainly due to uncertainties in the climate sensitivity and ocean heat uptake. These uncertainties undermine the ability to predict how much carbon may be emitted before reaching a warming target

Projected pH reductions by 2100 might put deep North Atlantic biodiversity at risk

This study aims to evaluate the potential for impacts of ocean acidification on North Atlantic deep-sea ecosystems in response to IPCC AR5 Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs). Deep-sea biota is likely highly vulnerable to changes in seawater chemistry and sensitive to moderate excursions in pH. Here we show, from seven fully coupled Earth system models, that for three out of four RCPs over 17% of the seafloor area below 500 m depth in the North Atlantic sector will experience pH reductions exceeding ?0.2 units by 2100. Increased stratification in response to climate change partially alleviates the impact of ocean acidification on deep benthic environments. We report on major pH reductions over the deep North Atlantic seafloor (depth >500 m) and at important deep-sea features, such as seamounts and canyons. By 2100, and under the high CO2 scenario RCP8.5, pH reductions exceeding ?0.2 (?0.3) units are projected in close to 23% (~15%) of North Atlantic deep-sea canyons and ~8% (3%) of seamounts – including seamounts proposed as sites of marine protected areas. The spatial pattern of impacts reflects the depth of the pH perturbation and does not scale linearly with atmospheric CO2 concentration. Impacts may cause negative changes of the same magnitude or exceeding the current target of 10% of preservation of marine biomes set by the convention on biological diversity, implying that ocean acidification may offset benefits from conservation/management strategies relying on the regulation of resource exploitation

Щодо питання про територіальні межі та назву земель середнього Подніпров'я

The expansion of OMZs (Oxygen Minimum Zones) due to climate change and their possible evolution and impacts on the ecosystems and the atmosphere are still debated, mostly because of the unability of global climate models to adequatly reproduce the processes governing OMZs. In this study, we examine the factors controlling the oxygen budget, i.e. the equilibrium between oxygen sources and sinks in the northern Arabian Sea OMZ using an eddy-resolving biophysical model. Our model confirms that the biological consumption of oxygen is most intense below the region of highest productivity in the western Arabian Sea. The oxygen drawdown in this region is counterbalanced by the large supply of oxygenated waters originated from the south and advected horizontally by the western boundary current. Although the biological sink and the dynamical sources of oxygen compensate on annual average, we find that the seasonality of the dynamical transport of oxygen is 3 to 5 times larger than the seasonality of the biological sink. In agreement with previous findings, the resulting seasonality of oxygen concentration in the OMZ is relatively weak, with a variability of the order of 15% of the annual mean oxygen concentration in the oxycline and 5% elsewhere. This seasonality primarily arises from the vertical displacement of the OMZ forced by the monsoonal reversal of Ekman pumping across the basin. In coastal areas, the oxygen concentration is also modulated seasonally by lateral advection. Along the western coast of the Arabian Sea, the Somali Current transports oxygen-rich waters originated from the south during summer and oxygen-poor waters from the northeast during winter. Along the eastern coast of the Arabian Sea, we find that the main contributor to lateral advection in the OMZ is the Indian coastal undercurrent that advects southern oxygenated waters during summer and northern low-oxygen waters during winter. In this region, our model indicates that oxygen concentrations are modulated seasonally by coastal Kelvin waves and westward-propagating Rossby waves. Whereas on seasonal time scales the sources and sinks of oxygen are dominated by the mean vertical and lateral advection (Ekman pumping and monsoonal currents), on annual time scales we find that the biological sink is counterbalanced by the supply of oxygen sustained by mesoscale structures (eddies and filaments). Eddy-driven advection hence promotes the vertical supply of oxygen along the western coast of the Arabian Sea and the lateral transport of ventilated waters offshore the coast of Oman and southwest India

Hydrological cycle amplification imposes spatial patterns on the climate change response of ocean pH and carbonate chemistry

​​​​​​​Ocean CO2 uptake and acidification in response to human activities are driven primarily by the rise in atmospheric CO2 but are also modulated by climate change. Existing work suggests that this “climate effect” influences the uptake and storage of anthropogenic carbon and acidification via the global increase in ocean temperature, although some regional responses have been attributed to changes in circulation or biological activity. Here, we investigate spatial patterns in the climate effect on surface ocean acidification (and the closely related carbonate chemistry) in an Earth system model under a rapid CO2-increase scenario and identify a different driving process. We show that the amplification of the hydrological cycle, a robustly simulated feature of climate change, is largely responsible for the spatial patterns in this climate effect at the sea surface. This “hydrological effect” can be understood as a subset of the total climate effect, which includes warming, hydrological cycle amplification, circulation, and biological changes. We demonstrate that it acts through two primary mechanisms: (i) directly diluting or concentrating dissolved ions by adding or removing freshwater and (ii) altering the sea surface temperature, which influences the solubility of dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) and acidity of seawater. The hydrological effect opposes acidification in salinifying regions, most notably the subtropical Atlantic, and enhances acidification in freshening regions such as the western Pacific. Its single strongest effect is to dilute the negative ions that buffer the dissolution of CO2, quantified as alkalinity. The local changes in alkalinity, DIC, and pH linked to the pattern of hydrological cycle amplification are as strong as the (largely uniform) changes due to warming, explaining the weak increase in pH and DIC seen in the climate effect in the subtropical Atlantic Ocean.</p

Decadal changes of the Western Arabian sea ecosystem

Historical data from oceanographic expeditions and remotely sensed data on outgoing longwave radiation, temperature, wind speed and ocean color in the western Arabian Sea (1950–2010) were used to investigate decadal trends in the physical and biochemical properties of the upper 300 m. 72 % of the 29,043 vertical profiles retrieved originated from USA and UK expeditions. Increasing outgoing longwave radiation, surface air temperatures and sea surface temperature were identified on decadal timescales. These were well correlated with decreasing wind speeds associated with a reduced Siberian High atmospheric anomaly. Shoaling of the oxycline and nitracline was observed as well as acidification of the upper 300 m. These physical and chemical changes were accompanied by declining chlorophyll-a concentrations, vertical macrofaunal habitat compression, declining sardine landings and an increase of fish kill incidents along the Omani coast

Evaluating CMIP5 ocean biogeochemistry and Southern Ocean carbon uptake using atmospheric potential oxygen: Present-day performance and future projection

Observed seasonal cycles in atmospheric potential oxygen (APO ~ O2 + 1.1 CO2) were used to evaluate eight ocean biogeochemistry models from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5). Model APO seasonal cycles were computed from the CMIP5 air-sea O2 and CO2 fluxes and compared to observations at three Southern Hemisphere monitoring sites. Four of the models captured either the observed APO seasonal amplitude or phasing relatively well, while the other four did not. Many models had an unrealistic seasonal phasing or amplitude of the CO2 flux, which in turn influenced APO. By 2100 under RCP8.5, the models projected little change in the O2 component of APO but large changes in the seasonality of the CO2 component associated with ocean acidification. The models with poorer performance on present-day APO tended to project larger net carbon uptake in the Southern Ocean, both today and in 2100

Inconsistent strategies to spin up models in CMIP5: Implications for ocean biogeochemical model performance assessment

This is the final version of the article. Available from EGU via the DOI in this record.During the fifth phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5) substantial efforts were made to systematically assess the skill of Earth system models. One goal was to check how realistically representative marine biogeochemical tracer distributions could be reproduced by models. In routine assessments model historical hindcasts were compared with available modern biogeochemical observations. However, these assessments considered neither how close modeled biogeochemical reservoirs were to equilibrium nor the sensitivity of model performance to initial conditions or to the spin-up protocols. Here, we explore how the large diversity in spin-up protocols used for marine biogeochemistry in CMIP5 Earth system models (ESMs) contributes to model-to-model differences in the simulated fields. We take advantage of a 500-year spin-up simulation of IPSL-CM5A-LR to quantify the influence of the spin-up protocol on model ability to reproduce relevant data fields. Amplification of biases in selected biogeochemical fields (O2, NO3, Alk-DIC) is assessed as a function of spin-up duration. We demonstrate that a relationship between spin-up duration and assessment metrics emerges from our model results and holds when confronted with a larger ensemble of CMIP5 models. This shows that drift has implications for performance assessment in addition to possibly aliasing estimates of climate change impact. Our study suggests that differences in spin-up protocols could explain a substantial part of model disparities, constituting a source of model-to-model uncertainty. This requires more attention in future model intercomparison exercises in order to provide quantitatively more correct ESM results on marine biogeochemistry and carbon cycle feedbacks.We sincerely thank I. Kriest, F. Joos, the anonymous reviewer and A. Yool for their useful comments on this paper. This work was supported by H2020 project CRESCENDO “Coordinated Research in Earth Systems and Climate: Experiments, kNowledge, Dissemination and Outreach”, which received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement no. 641816 and by the EU FP7 project CARBOCHANGE “Changes in carbon uptake and emissions by oceans in a changing climate” which received funding from the European community’s Seventh Framework Programme under grant agreement no. 264879. Supercomputing time was provided by GENCI (Grand Equipement National de Calcul Intensif) at CCRT (Centre de Calcul Recherche et Technologie), allocation 016178. Finally, we are grateful to the ESGF project which makes data available for all the community. Roland Séférian is grateful to Aurélien Ribes for his kind advices on statistics. Jerry Tjiputra acknowledges ORGANIC project (239965/F20) funded by the Research Council of Norway. Christoph Heinze and Jerry Tjiputra are grateful for support through project EVA – Earth system modelling of climate variations in the Anthropocene (229771/E10) funded by the Research Council of Norway, as well as CPU-time and mass storage provided through NOTUR project NN2345K as well as NorStore project NS2345K. Keith Lindsay and Scott C. Doney acknowledge support from the National Science Foundation

Concentrations, ratios, and sinking fluxes of major bioelements at Ocean Station Papa

© The Author(s), 2021. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Roca-Marti, M., Benitez-Nelson, C. R., Umhau, B. P., Wyatt, A. M., Clevenger, S. J., Pike, S., Horner, T. J., Estapa, M. L., Resplandy, L., & Buesseler, K. O. Concentrations, ratios, and sinking fluxes of major bioelements at Ocean Station Papa. Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene, 9(1), (2021): 00166, https://doi.org/10.1525/elementa.2020.00166.Fluxes of major bioelements associated with sinking particles were quantified in late summer 2018 as part of the EXport Processes in the Ocean from RemoTe Sensing (EXPORTS) field campaign near Ocean Station Papa in the subarctic northeast Pacific. The thorium-234 method was used in conjunction with size-fractionated (1–5, 5–51, and >51 μm) concentrations of particulate nitrogen (PN), total particulate phosphorus (TPP), biogenic silica (bSi), and particulate inorganic carbon (PIC) collected using large volume filtration via in situ pumps. We build upon recent work quantifying POC fluxes during EXPORTS. Similar remineralization length scales were observed for both POC and PN across all particle size classes from depths of 50–500 m. Unlike bSi and PIC, the soft tissue–associated POC, PN, and TPP fluxes strongly attenuated from 50 m to the base of the euphotic zone (approximately 120 m). Cruise-average thorium-234-derived fluxes (mmol m–2 d–1) at 120 m were 1.7 ± 0.6 for POC, 0.22 ± 0.07 for PN, 0.019 ± 0.007 for TPP, 0.69 ± 0.26 for bSi, and 0.055 ± 0.022 for PIC. These bioelement fluxes were similar to previous observations at this site, with the exception of PIC, which was 1 to 2 orders of magnitude lower. Transfer efficiencies within the upper twilight zone (flux 220 m/flux 120 m) were highest for PIC (84%) and bSi (79%), followed by POC (61%), PN (58%), and TPP (49%). These differences indicate preferential remineralization of TPP relative to POC or PN and larger losses of soft tissue relative to biominerals in sinking particles below the euphotic zone. Comprehensive characterization of the particulate bioelement fluxes obtained here will support future efforts linking phytoplankton community composition and food-web dynamics to the composition, magnitude, and attenuation of material that sinks to deeper waters.The authors would like to acknowledge support from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration as part of the EXport Processes in the Ocean from RemoTe Sensing program awards 80NSSC17K0555 and 80NSSC17K0662. They also acknowledge the funding from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution’s Ocean Twilight Zone study for MRM and KOB, the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program for AMW, and the Ocean Frontier Institute for MRM

High-resolution spatial and temporal measurements of particulate organic carbon flux using thorium-234 in the northeast Pacific Ocean during the EXport processes in the ocean from RemoTe sensing field campaign

© The Author(s), 2020. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Buesseler, K. O., Benitez-Nelson, C. R., Roca-Marti, M., Wyatt, A. M., Resplandy, L., Clevenger, S. J., Drysdale, J. A., Estapa, M. L., Pike, S., & Umhau, B. P. High-resolution spatial and temporal measurements of particulate organic carbon flux using thorium-234 in the northeast Pacific Ocean during the EXport processes in the ocean from RemoTe sensing field campaign. Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene, 8(1), (2020): 030, https://doi.org/10.1525/elementa.030.The EXport Processes in the Ocean from RemoTe Sensing (EXPORTS) program of National Aeronautics and Space Administration focuses on linking remotely sensed properties from satellites to the mechanisms that control the transfer of carbon from surface waters to depth. Here, the naturally occurring radionuclide thorium-234 was used as a tracer of sinking particle flux. More than 950 234Th measurements were made during August–September 2018 at Ocean Station Papa in the northeast Pacific Ocean. High-resolution vertical sampling enabled observations of the spatial and temporal evolution of particle flux in Lagrangian fashion. Thorium-234 profiles were remarkably consistent, with steady-state (SS) 234Th fluxes reaching 1,450 ± 300 dpm m−2 d−1 at 100 m. Nonetheless, 234Th increased by 6%–10% in the upper 60 m during the cruise, leading to consideration of a non-steady-state (NSS) model and/or horizontal transport, with NSS having the largest impact by decreasing SS 234Th fluxes by 30%. Below 100 m, NSS and SS models overlapped. Particulate organic carbon (POC)/234Th ratios decreased with depth in small (1–5 μm) and mid-sized (5–51 μm) particles, while large particle (>51 μm) ratios remained relatively constant, likely influenced by swimmer contamination. Using an average SS and NSS 234Th flux and the POC/234Th ratio of mid-sized particles, we determined a best estimate of POC flux. Maximum POC flux was 5.5 ± 1.7 mmol C m−2 d−1 at 50 m, decreasing by 70% at the base of the primary production zone (117 m). These results support earlier studies that this site is characterized by a modest biological carbon pump, with an export efficiency of 13% ± 5% (POC flux/net primary production at 120 m) and 39% flux attenuation in the subsequent 100 m (POC flux 220 m/POC flux 120m). This work sets the foundation for understanding controls on the biological carbon pump during this EXPORTS campaign.The authors would like to acknowledge support from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as part of the EXport Processes in the Ocean from RemoTe Sensing (EXPORTS) program awards 80NSSC17K0555 and 80NSSC17K0662; the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution’s Ocean Twilight Zone study for KOB and MRM, and the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program (NSF-GRFP) for funding and support of AW