Integrating Drivers of Atlantic Productivity (IDAPro)

支配地球表面的开放海洋生态系统都依赖于统称为浮游植物的单细胞生物产生新的有机物质。这些生物利用光、营养物质和二氧化碳通过称为初级生产的过程生长。除了形成海洋食物网的基础外，这些生物的集体初级生产最终对海洋生物保持大气二氧化碳水平在30-40%左右，从而对全球气候产生重大影响。因此，了解初级生产在未来可能如何变化，对于预测海洋生态系统和碳循环对气候变化的持续响应非常重要。上层海洋浮游植物的丰度和活动性始终是生长率（由资源的可得性决定）和损失率（包括由统称为浮游动物的生物放牧造成的损失率）以及病毒和直接下沉造成的死亡率之间的平衡。然而，决定生长和损失的因素在海洋的不同区域和整个年循环中以复杂和相互作用的方式动态变化。我们目前正试图利用这些相互作用过程的数值模型来获取预测初级生产未来变化所需的知识。然而，我们目前最先进的模型在预测未来变化方面存在很大差异，因为它们代表各种关键过程的方式不同。我们将重点放在海洋生物碳储存的重要区域，即中高纬度的北大西洋，我们的提案旨在利用卫星、船舶和新型机器人平台的组合，对初级生产和控制因素进行令人兴奋的新的全年观测。我们将通过在海上进行的详细实验工作以及有针对性的数值模拟来增强这些观察结果，以便更好地了解生长和损失控制之间的平衡，最重要的是，确定这种平衡在动态季节周期中的变化情况。我们的观测和实验数据将使我们能够确定初级生产的规模和季节变化的关键驱动因素，并将这些因素与北大西洋广大地区海洋碳储存效率的总体控制联系起来。除了提供新的认识外，我们的研究还将产生改进的增长率和损失率数据集，为数值模型提供更严格的约束，从而为更自信地预测未来初级生产和碳循环对气候变化的响应指明道路。

The open ocean ecosystems which dominate the surface of our planet are all dependent on the generation of new organic matter by single celled organisms which are collectively termed phytoplankton. These organisms use light, nutrients and carbon dioxide to grow through a process termed primary production. In addition to forming the base of the marine food web, the collective primary production by these organisms is ultimately responsible for ocean biology keeping atmospheric carbon dioxide levels around 30-40% lower than they would otherwise be, thus exerting a significant impact on global climate. Understanding how primary production may vary in the future is thus important for predicting the ongoing response of both ocean ecosystems and carbon cycling to climate change. The abundance and activity of phytoplankton in the upper ocean is always a balance between growth rates (determined by the availability of resources) and loss rates including through grazing by organisms collectively termed zooplankton and mortality due to viruses and direct sinking. However, the factors determining both growth and loss dynamically vary both across the different regions of the ocean and throughout the annual cycle in complex and interacting ways. We currently try and capture the knowledge necessary to predict future changes in primary production using numerical models of these interacting processes. However, our current state-of-the-art models differ substantially in their predictions of future change due to the differing ways they represent a variety of these key processes.Focusing on an important region of the ocean for biological carbon storage, the mid-high latitude North Atlantic, our proposal aims to make exciting new year-round observations of primary production and the controlling factors using a combination of satellite, ship-based and novel robotic platforms. We will augment these observations with detailed experimental work undertaken at sea, alongside targeted numerical modelling, in order to generate an improved understanding of the balance between controls on growth and loss and, crucially, establish how this varies over the dynamic seasonal cycle. Data from our observations and experiments will allow us to establish key drivers of the magnitude and seasonal changes in primary production and link these to the overall controls on the efficiency of ocean carbon storage across a broad region of the North Atlantic Ocean. In addition to providing new understanding, our research will generate improved data sets of rates of growth and loss, providing more rigorous constraints for numerical models and hence pointing the way towards more confident predictions of future primary production and carbon cycle responses to climate change.