Skip to content
Home
About Us
Resources
Profiles Metrics
Authors Directory
Institutions Directory
Top Authors
Top Institutions
Top Sponsors
AI Digest
Contact Us
Menu
Home
About Us
Resources
Profiles Metrics
Authors Directory
Institutions Directory
Top Authors
Top Institutions
Top Sponsors
AI Digest
Contact Us
Home
About Us
Resources
Profiles Metrics
Authors Directory
Institutions Directory
Top Authors
Top Institutions
Top Sponsors
AI Digest
Contact Us
Menu
Home
About Us
Resources
Profiles Metrics
Authors Directory
Institutions Directory
Top Authors
Top Institutions
Top Sponsors
AI Digest
Contact Us
Publication Details
AFRICAN RESEARCH NEXUS
SHINING A SPOTLIGHT ON AFRICAN RESEARCH
earth and planetary sciences
Surface-water iron supplies in the Southern Ocean sustained by deep winter mixing
Nature Geoscience, Volume 7, No. 4, Year 2014
Notification
URL copied to clipboard!
Description
Low levels of iron limit primary productivity across much of the Southern Ocean. At the basin scale, most dissolved iron is supplied to surface waters from subsurface reservoirs, because land inputs are spatially limited. Deep mixing in winter together with year-round diffusion across density surfaces, known as diapycnal diffusion, are the main physical processes that carry iron-laden subsurface waters to the surface. Here, we analyse data on dissolved iron concentrations in the top 1,000 m of the Southern Ocean, taken from all known and available cruises to date, together with hydrographic data to determine the relative importance of deep winter mixing and diapycnal diffusion to dissolved iron fluxes at the basin scale. Using information on the vertical distribution of iron we show that deep winter mixing supplies ten times more iron to the surface ocean each year, on average, than diapycnal diffusion. Biological observations from the sub-Antarctic sector suggest that following the depletion of this wintertime iron pulse, intense iron recycling sustains productivity over the subsequent spring and summer. We conclude that winter mixing and surface-water iron recycling are important drivers of temporal variations in Southern Ocean primary production. © 2014 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved.
Authors & Co-Authors
Tagliabue, Alessandro
United Kingdom, Liverpool
University of Liverpool
South Africa, Pretoria
The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research
Sallée, Jean Baptiste
France, Paris
Laboratoire D'océanographie et du Climat : Expérimentations et Approches Numériques
United Kingdom, Cambridge
British Antarctic Survey
Bowie, Andrew R.
Australia, Hobart
University of Tasmania
Lévy, Marina
France, Paris
Laboratoire D'océanographie et du Climat : Expérimentations et Approches Numériques
Swart, Sebastiaan
South Africa, Pretoria
The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research
South Africa, Cape Town
University of Cape Town
Boyd, P. W.
New Zealand, Dunedin
University of Otago
Australia, Hobart
Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies
Statistics
Citations: 237
Authors: 6
Affiliations: 8
Identifiers
Doi:
10.1038/ngeo2101
ISSN:
17520894
e-ISSN:
17520908
Research Areas
Environmental