Particle fluxes of thirteen sediment traps off Cape Blanc, Mauritania

DOI

Long-term data characterizing the oceans' biological carbon pump are essential for understanding impacts of climate variability on marine ecosystems. The 'Bakun upwelling intensification hypothesis' suggests intensified coastal upwelling due to a greater land-sea temperature gradient influenced by global warming. We present particle fluxes from ca. 1200-3600m water depth from a coastal and an offshore sediment trap setting located in the Canary Current upwelling. Organic carbon (Corg) and biogenic opal (BSi, diatoms) fluxes were two- to three-fold higher at the coastal upwelling site compared to the offshore site, respectively, and showed higher seasonality with flux maxima in spring. Fluxes of dust regularly showed maxima in winter when frequent low-altitude dust storms and deposition occurred, decreasing offshore by about three-fold. We obtained a high temporal match of short-term peaks of BSi and dust fluxes in winter-spring at the coastal site. Corg and BSi fluxes revealed a decreasing trend from 2006 to 2016 at the coastal site, pointing to coastal upwelling relaxation during the last two decades. The permanent offshore upwelling zone of the Canary Current showed no signs of increasing upwelling as well, which contradicts the Bakun hypothesis.

Supplement to: Fischer, Gerhard; Romero, Oscar E; Toby, E; Iversen, Morten Hvitfeldt; Donner, Barbara; Mollenhauer, Gesine; Nowald, Nicolas; Ruhland, Götz; Klann, Marco; Hamady, Bambaye Ould; Wefer, Gerold (2019): Changes in the dust‐influenced biological carbon pump in the Canary Current System: Implications from a coastal and an offshore sediment trap record off Cape Blanc, Mauritania. Global Biogeochemical Cycles, 33(8), 1100-1128

Identifier
DOI https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.904422
Related Identifier https://doi.org/10.1029/2019GB006194
Related Identifier https://store.pangaea.de/Publications/FischerG-etal_2019/Table1-5.zip
Metadata Access https://ws.pangaea.de/oai/provider?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=datacite4&identifier=oai:pangaea.de:doi:10.1594/PANGAEA.904422
Provenance
Creator Fischer, Gerhard ORCID logo
Publisher PANGAEA
Publication Year 2019
Rights Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
OpenAccess true
Representation
Resource Type Supplementary Dataset; Dataset
Format text/tab-separated-values
Size 2190 data points
Discipline Earth System Research
Spatial Coverage (-18.742W, 20.742S, -18.698E, 20.883N); Cape Blanc, Mauritania
Temporal Coverage Begin 2003-06-05T00:00:00Z
Temporal Coverage End 2016-02-18T00:00:00Z