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Experimental determination of the organic carbon flux from open-ocean surface waters

Nature volume 389, pages 951–954 (1997)Cite this article

Abstract

The flux of biologically produced organic carbon from the euphotic zone of the ocean to the deep waters below—the ‘biological organic carbon pump’—is one of the main controls on the carbon dioxide partial pressure in the atmosphere1. Accurate determination of this flux is therefore critically important for understanding the global carbon cycle and its response to climate change. Our goal is to assess how accurately the biological organic carbon pump can be determined at a single location and to constrain estimates of the global value. As there are no standards against which such environmental fluxes can be measured, we assess accuracy by comparing results from three independent experimental approaches for measuring the net annual export of organic carbon from the euphotic zone in the subtropical North Pacific Ocean near Hawaii. Mass balances of dissolved oxygen, inorganic carbon and organic carbon yield estimates of the organic carbon export flux of 2.7 ± 1.7, 1.6 ± 0.9 and 2.0 ± 0.9 mol C m−2 yr−1, respectively. These three estimates are not significantly different, and establish the present analytically attainable accuracy at this location to be about ±50%. If 2.0 mol C m−2 yr−1 is typical of the organic carbon export flux in the subtropical ocean, then this vast region, often considered to be a biological desert, may be responsible for up to half of the global-ocean biological organic carbon pump.

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Figure 1: Oxygen, argon and nitrogen data in the upper water column at station ALOHA.
Figure 2: Measurements of dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) species in the mixed layer at station ALOHA during 1990 ([diamond with plus or cross joining the angles]) and 1994 (⊠).
Figure 3: The particulate carbon flux at the depth of 150 m as a function of the Hawaii Ocean Time series (HOT) cruise number, with the 1990,.

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Acknowledgements

We thank C. Stump, D. Wilber and D. Hebel for technical work which helped make this study possible. This work was supported by the NSF.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Oceanography, University of Washington, Seattle, 98195, Washington, USA

    S. Emerson & P. Quay

  2. Department of Oceanography, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, 96822, Hawaii, USA

    D. Karl, C. Winn, L. Tupas & M. Landry

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  1. S. Emerson
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  4. C. Winn
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  5. L. Tupas
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  6. M. Landry
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Correspondence to S. Emerson.

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Emerson, S., Quay, P., Karl, D. et al. Experimental determination of the organic carbon flux from open-ocean surface waters. Nature 389, 951–954 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1038/40111

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