Anticyclonic eddies are more productive than cyclonic eddies in subtropical gyres because of winter mixing.

Mesoscale eddies are ubiquitous features of ocean circulation that modulate the supply of nutrients to the upper sunlit ocean, influencing the rates of carbon fixation and export. The popular eddy-pumping paradigm implies that nutrient fluxes are enhanced in cyclonic eddies because of upwelling inside the eddy, leading to higher phytoplankton production. We show that this view does not hold for a substantial portion of eddies within oceanic subtropical gyres, the largest ecosystems in the ocean.

Reduction of the Powerful Greenhouse Gas N2O in the South-Eastern Indian Ocean.

Nitrous oxide (N2O) is a powerful greenhouse gas and a key catalyst of stratospheric ozone depletion. Yet, little data exist about the sink and source terms of the production and reduction of N2O outside the well-known oxygen minimum zones (OMZ). Here we show the presence of functional marker genes for the reduction of N2O in the last step of the denitrification process (nitrous oxide reductase genes; nosZ) in oxygenated surface waters (180-250 O2 μmol.

Impacts of light shading and nutrient enrichment geo-engineering approaches on the productivity of a stratified, oligotrophic ocean ecosystem.

Geo-engineering proposals to mitigate global warming have focused either on methods of carbon dioxide removal, particularly nutrient fertilization of plant growth, or on cooling the Earth's surface by reducing incoming solar radiation (shading). Marine phytoplankton contribute half the Earth's biological carbon fixation and carbon export in the ocean is modulated by the actions of microbes and grazing communities in recycling nutrients. Both nutrients and light are essential for photosynthesis, so understanding the relative influence of both these geo-engineering approaches on ocean ecosystem production and processes is critical to the evaluation of their effectiveness.

Particle backscattering as a function of chlorophyll and phytoplankton size structure in the open-ocean.

Using an extensive database of in situ observations we present a model that estimates the particle backscattering coefficient as a function of the total chlorophyll concentration in the open-ocean (Case-1 waters). The parameters of the model include a constant background component and the chlorophyll-specific backscattering coefficients associated with small (<20 μm) and large (>20 μm) phytoplankton. The new model performed with similar accuracy when compared with a traditional power-law function, with the additional benefit of providing information on the role of phytoplankton size.

Model of phytoplankton absorption based on three size classes.

Using the phytoplankton size-class model of Brewin et al. [Ecol. Model.