Preformed and regenerated phosphate in ocean general circulation models: Can right total concentrations be wrong?

O. Duteil, W. Koeve, A. Oschlies, O. Aumont, D. Bianchi, L. Bopp, E. Galbraith, R. Matear, J. K. Moore, Jorge Louis Sarmiento, J. Segschneider

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

44 Scopus citations

Abstract

Phosphate distributions simulated by seven state-of-the-art biogeochemical ocean circulation models are evaluated against observations of global ocean nutrient distributions. The biogeochemical models exhibit different structural complexities, ranging from simple nutrient-restoring to multi-nutrient NPZD type models. We evaluate the simulations using the observed volume distribution of phosphate. The errors in these simulated volume class distributions are significantly larger when preformed phosphate (or regenerated phosphate) rather than total phosphate is considered. Our analysis reveals that models can achieve similarly good fits to observed total phosphate distributions for a∼very different partitioning into preformed and regenerated nutrient components. This has implications for the strength and potential climate sensitivity of the simulated biological carbon pump. We suggest complementing the use of total nutrient distributions for assessing model skill by an evaluation of the respective preformed and regenerated nutrient components.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)1797-1807
Number of pages11
JournalBiogeosciences
Volume9
Issue number5
DOIs
StatePublished - 2012

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics
  • Earth-Surface Processes

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