Marine phytoplankton stoichiometry mediates nonlinear interactions between nutrient supply, temperature, and atmospheric CO2

Moreno, Allison R.; Hagstrom, George I.; Primeau, Francois W.; Levin, Simon A.; Martiny, Adam C.

doi:10.5194/bg-15-2761-2018

Title: Marine phytoplankton stoichiometry mediates nonlinear interactions between nutrient supply, temperature, and atmospheric CO₂

Journal Article · Wed May 09 00:00:00 EDT 2018 · Biogeosciences (Online)

DOI:https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-15-2761-2018· OSTI ID:1503299

Moreno, Allison R. ^[1]; Hagstrom, George I. ^[2]; Primeau, Francois W. ^[1];

^[2];

^[1]

Univ., of California, Irvine, CA (United States)
Princeton Univ., Princeton, NJ (United States)

Marine phytoplankton stoichiometry links nutrient supply to marine carbon export. Deviations of phytoplankton stoichiometry from Redfield proportions (106C:1P) could therefore have a significant impact on carbon cycling, and understanding which environmental factors drive these deviations may reveal new mechanisms regulating the carbon cycle. To explore the links between environmental conditions, stoichiometry, and carbon cycling, we compared four different models of phytoplankton C:P: a fixed Redfield model, a model with C:P given as a function of surface phosphorus concentration (P), a model with CP given as a function of temperature, and a new multi-environmental model that predicts C:P as a function of light, temperature, and P. These stoichiometric models were embedded into a five-box ocean circulation model, which resolves the three major ocean biomes (high-latitude, subtropical gyres, and tropical upwelling regions). Contrary to the expectation of a monotonic relationship between surface nutrient drawdown and carbon export, we found that lateral nutrient transport from lower C:P tropical waters to high C:P subtropical waters could cause carbon export to decrease with increased tropical nutrient utilization. It has been hypothesized that a positive feedback between temperature and pCO_{2 atm} will play an important role in anthropogenic climate change, with changes in the biological pump playing at most a secondary role. Here we show that environmentally driven shifts in stoichiometry make the biological pump more influential, and may reverse the expected positive relationship between temperature and pCO_2,atm. In the temperature-only model, changes in tropical temperature have more impact on the Δ pCO_2,atm (~41ppm) compared to subtropical temperature changes (~4.5ppm). Our multi-environmental model predicted a decline in pCO_2,atm of ~46ppm when temperature spanned a change of 10°C. Thus, we find that variation in marine phytoplankton stoichiometry and its environmental controlling factors can lead to nonlinear controls on pCO_2,atm, implying the need for further studies of ocean C:P and the impact on ocean carbon cycling.

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Research Organization:: Univ., of California, Irvine, CA (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER)

Grant/Contract Number:: SC0012550

OSTI ID:: 1503299

Journal Information:: Biogeosciences (Online), Vol. 15, Issue 9; ISSN 1726-4189

Publisher:: European Geosciences UnionCopyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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Cited by: 21 works

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