Abstract
Ocean circulation replenishes surface nutrients depleted by biological production and export. Vertical processes are thought to dominate, but estimated vertical nutrient fluxes are insufficient to explain observed net productivity in the subtropical ocean gyres1. Lateral inputs help balance the North Atlantic nutrient budget2,3,4,5,6,7, but their importance for other gyres has not been demonstrated. Here we use an ocean model that couples circulation and ecosystem dynamics to show that lateral transport and biological uptake of inorganic and organic forms of nitrogen and phosphorus from the gyre margins exceeds the vertical delivery of nutrients, supplying 24–36% of the nitrogen and 44–67% of the phosphorus required to close gyre nutrient budgets. At the Bermuda and Hawaii time-series sites, nearly half of the annual lateral supply by lateral transport occurs during the summer-to-fall stratified period, helping explain seasonal patterns of inorganic carbon drawdown and nitrogen fixation. Our study confirms the importance of upper-ocean lateral nutrient transport for understanding the biological cycles of carbon and nutrients in the ocean’s largest biome.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by awards ER65358 and DE-SC0012550 from the US DOE Office of Biological and Environmental Research to F.P. and J.K.M.
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R.T.L., F.P. and J.K.M. conceived the study. R.T.L. and J.K.M. performed the model simulation. F.P. and R.T.L. developed new tracer transport diagnostics. R.T.L. wrote the paper with input from F.P. and J.K.M.
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Letscher, R., Primeau, F. & Moore, J. Nutrient budgets in the subtropical ocean gyres dominated by lateral transport. Nature Geosci 9, 815–819 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo2812
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo2812
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