Acronym: OCB-002
Program: Ocean Carbon & Biogeochemistry [OCB]
URL: Project Web Site
Start date: 2007-03
End date: 2010-02
Geolocation: models:regional and global
Description:

from the NSF proposal abstract

An important component of net ecosystem production in the surface ocean sinks to depth where it can be remineralized to carbon dioxide or transit to the bottom. Some of these sinking particles are formed via a number of processes that create rapidly sinking particles that have the potential to transport carbon to the benthos without remineralization. However, currently, very few biogeochemical models explicitly represent the flux of sinking of particles, relying instead on empirical or semi-empirical relationships to distribute material vertically in the water column.

In this integrated research and education CAREER proposal, a researcher from the University of Georgia will focus on the development of numerical models of particle export flux from the surface ocean that can be incorporated into regional and global biogeochemical models. The novel aspect of these models is that they will concentrate on the physical and biological processes (coagulation and fecal pellet production) that transform individual, slowly sinking particles into large, rapidly sinking ones. Naively incorporating coagulation models into these models is computationally prohibitive, so new algorithms and parameterizations will have to be developed that represent the salient features of particle coagulation (e.g., particle settling velocities) and the interaction between particle dynamics, ecosystem dynamics and the physical properties of the water column (such as density). This will be accomplished using physical and biogeochemical models of increasing complexity (such as simple mixed layer models and the JGOFS Regional Test Bed Models), with new parameterizations and algorithms being developed at each stage and influencing the next one.

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