Euphotic zone residence time of Antarctic Bottom Water
Yinghuan Xie, Paul Spence, Stuart Corney, Veronica Tamsitt, Hannah Dawson, Christina Schmidt and Lennart Bach
About
AABW holds great potential to CO2 removal (CDR) as the water masses contain nutrients that remain largely unutilized by biological carbon fixation before form to AABW. Knowing how long these nutrients remain in the euphotic zone where they can be utilized helps to exploit the CDR potential and understand which regions enable phytoplankton blooms. We run 50 years Larangian virtual particle tracking experiment in the ACCESS-OM2-01 model and found: (1) 58% of particles never enter the euphotic zone before transforming into AABW; (2) 42% reach the euphotic zone with an average residence time of 143 days; (3) AABW is mainly exposed to plankton growth-enabling light on the Antarctic continental shelf during spring and summer.
Poster
Note: this topic is part of the 2023 ACCESS Community Workshop Poster session