Identification

Title

The imprint of Southern Ocean storms on modeled surface chlorophyll, their drivers and satellite biases

Abstract

Southern Ocean (SO) phytoplankton chlorophyll is highly variable on sub‐seasonal time scales. Although the SO is the windiest ocean basin globally, it is not conclusively understood how storms impact SO phytoplankton dynamics. Much of our existing knowledge stems from satellites, but biases due to data gaps from cloud cover and low solar angles remain unquantified. Here, we use ocean–sea‐ice simulations with the Community Earth System Model to quantify the climatological 1997–2018 imprint of storms on chlorophyll and phytoplankton dynamics in the ice‐free SO. Additionally, by comparing the full‐field model output to synthetic satellite observations, we quantify sampling biases in satellite‐derived estimates. We find that both the sign and the magnitude of the average surface chlorophyll imprint vary substantially across storms but last for at least 4 days after the storm passing. Based on our analysis, more than one third of the storms explain the majority of local non‐seasonal chlorophyll variability, but satellite‐derived storm imprints are often too large in magnitude. On the day of the storm passing, changes in vertical mixing predominantly cause surface chlorophyll anomalies, and reduced light availability due to enhanced cloud cover outweighs the enhanced nutrient availability due to entrainment. Interestingly, storms imprint differently on total net primary production than on surface chlorophyll, demonstrating the difficulty to derive carbon‐cycle impacts from a surface‐chlorophyll assessment. With SO future storm activity projected to increase, complementing satellite observations with other observing technologies, for example, profiling floats, is necessary to better constrain how storms impact biological carbon cycling in the SO.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

https://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7kd23b1

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2025-07-01T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

<span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:10pt;font-style:normal;" data-sheets-root="1">Copyright author(s). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.</span>

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact