Bio-Geo Chemical Cycling Carbon in the Southern Ocean

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9525809 FLIERL The Southern Ocean is a region of great importance in the global carbon cycle, yet the biogeochemical cycling there is not well understood. In part this lack of understanding is attributable to paucity of observations, but it is also a consequence of the multiplicity of spatial scales that control the biology and chemistry of the Circumpolar Current-- from mesoscale to global scale. This team of ocean modelers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology will focus on the biological, chemical, and physical processes affecting the production, consumption, and transport of nutrients, inorganic and organic carbon at mesoscale and higher spatial scales by modeling the mass balance of carbon and its various pathways of transformation. Tracer studies will resolve these processes down to the level of eddies. Then, the role of eddies will be considered in the definition of the patchy distributions of populations of marine organisms in the Southern Ocean. Finally, the results of this modeling study will be combined with other models of the global carbon cycle to better assess the role of the Southern Ocean in the global carbon picture.