Paper published

Our paper “Progressive oxygenation of the North Atlantic subpolar gyre” was published in JGR: Oceans last month! The paper is open access, and is available here, and code used for creating the figures is available on my GitHub: (https://github.com/jkoell/SPNA-ventilation).

In this paper, we investigate how oxygen is taken up and exported from the subpolar North Atlantic Ocean (SPNA). The figure below summarizes the main findings, showing the annual mean air-sea gas exchange and mean oxygen concentrations along a section at 45N. Four key processes are labeled in the figure:

1. Old, oxygen-poor water enters the subpolar North Atlantic with the North Atlantic Current
2. Oxygen is taken up from the atmosphere throughout the SPNA, mostly within the upper branch of the AMOC
3. As mode waters are progressively modified, oxygen accumulates along the subpolar gyre’s path
4. Deep Western Boundary current exports oxygen-rich North Atlantic Deep Water

These findings greatly improve our understanding of how the SPNA is ventilated, and can provide important constraints for future projections of ocean deoxygenation.