Misconceptions of the marine biological carbon pump in a changing climate: Thinking outside the "export" box.

The marine biological carbon pump (BCP) stores carbon in the ocean interior, isolating it from exchange with the atmosphere and thereby coregulating atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO ). As the BCP commonly is equated with the flux of organic material to the ocean interior, termed "export flux," a change in export flux is perceived to directly impact atmospheric CO , and thus climate. Here, we recap how this perception contrasts with current understanding of the BCP, emphasizing the lack of a direct relationship between global export flux and atmospheric CO .

Sea-ice transport driving Southern Ocean salinity and its recent trends.

Recent salinity changes in the Southern Ocean are among the most prominent signals of climate change in the global ocean, yet their underlying causes have not been firmly established. Here we propose that trends in the northward transport of Antarctic sea ice are a major contributor to these changes. Using satellite observations supplemented by sea-ice reconstructions, we estimate that wind-driven northward freshwater transport by sea ice increased by 20 ± 10 per cent between 1982 and 2008.

A daily global mesoscale ocean eddy dataset from satellite altimetry.

Mesoscale ocean eddies are ubiquitous coherent rotating structures of water with radial scales on the order of 100 kilometers. Eddies play a key role in the transport and mixing of momentum and tracers across the World Ocean. We present a global daily mesoscale ocean eddy dataset that contains ~45 million mesoscale features and 3.