Will open ocean oxygen stress intensify under climate change?
Gnanadesikan, A., J. P. Dunne, J. G. John, Biogeosciences Discuss., 8, doi:10.5194/bgd-8-7007-2011, 2011.
Goals of the research
Ten percent of today’s ocean volume is characterized by low level of dissolved oxygen similar to those found in the well-known “dead zones” in the Gulf of Mexico with 35% of global surface waters overlying at least some of this “hypoxia” (O2 <88 μM; 2 ml l-1). Under global warming, higher temperatures would be expected to directly lower oxygen concentrations and enhanced stratification to reduce the flow of well-ventilated surface waters to the interior. Under such circumstances, it has been hypothesized that the open-ocean dead zones could greatly expand and indeed changes in low-oxygen waters have been invoked as evidence of climate change. The primary objective of this work was to assess the role of global warming on oxygen solubility and vertical exchange in the ocean with particular attention of impact on the volume of hypoxic and suboxic waters. A simulation made with a full earth system model with dynamical atmosphere, ocean, sea ice and biogeochemical cycling shows that this holds true if the condition for hypoxia is set relatively high. However, the volume of the most hypoxic waters does not increase under global warming, as these waters actually become more oxygenated. We show that the rise in oxygen is associated with a drop in ventilation time. A term-by-term analysis within the least oxygenated waters shows an increased supply of oxygen due to lateral diffusion compensating an increase in remineralization within these highly hypoxic waters. This lateral diffusive flux is the result of an increase of ventilation along the Chilean coast, as a drying of the region under global warming opens up a region of wintertime convection in our model.
Relevance to NOAA science
Because the presence of oxygen is critical for habitat of living marine resources, this effort supports NOAA’s research into the future of the earth as a system under the influence of anthropogenic forcing to better quantify how anthropogenic warming may impact marine ecosystems. This work serves to broaden our understanding of the interplay between varieties of climatically and ecologically relevant processes at work in the present day marine environment with a glimpse into its possible future.
Relevance to society
In our efforts to quantify the impacts of anthropogenic warming on ocean hypoxia, this work helps us to reduce uncertainty of the future of living marine resources.
Unique aspects of this study
This research is unique in utilizing GFDL’s highly successful CM2.1 climate model as a carbon model backbone, in incorporating GFDL’s state of the art ocean biogeochemical models, and describes a novel and somewhat counter-intuitive result through a detailed analysis of the underlying physical and biogeochemical processes at work.
Description of the methodology
We based the development of these new earth system models on GFDL’s highly successful CM2.1 climate model. We incorporated GFDL’s state of the art ocean biogeochemical model and assess the biogeochemical changes under Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (SRES) forcing.
Known weaknesses or uncertainties
While state of the art in its design, this model suffer from many of the weaknesses typical of this class of model including the double ITCZ, overly strong El Nino, and equatorward constriction of the subtropical gyres. Most importantly, the model does not ventilate the eastern Equatorial Pacific nearly enough and thus severely over estimates the size of the hypoxic region. For these reason, the projected change in ventilation of the coast of Chile – the underlying mechanism of oxygen change ? is highly suspect as this ventilation mechanism is known to be sporadically active in the present day oceans yet is only exhibited in the model under intense climate warming and expansion of the subtropical gyres.