skip to main content


Title: Controls on the Cadmium-Phosphate Relationship in the Tropical South Pacific: Dissolved Cd in South Pacific
Award ID(s):
1658392
NSF-PAR ID:
10095633
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ;
Date Published:
Journal Name:
Global Biogeochemical Cycles
Volume:
31
Issue:
10
ISSN:
0886-6236
Page Range / eLocation ID:
1516 to 1527
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
More Like this
  1. Stochastic variability of internal atmospheric modes, known as teleconnection patterns, drives large-scale patterns of low-frequency SST variability in the extratropics . To investigate how the decadal component of this stochastically driven variability in the South and North Pacific affects the tropical Pacific and contributes to the observed basinwide pattern of decadal variability, a suite of climate model experiments was conducted . In these experiments, the models are forced with constant surface heat flux anomalies associated with the decadal component of the dominant atmospheric modes, particularly the Pacific–South American (PSA) and North Pacific Oscillation (NPO) patterns . Both the PSA and NPO modes induce basinwide SST anomalies in the tropical Pacific and beyond that resemble the observed interdecadal Pacific oscillation . The subtropical SST anomalies forced by the PSA and NPO modes propagate to the equatorial Pacific mainly through the wind–evaporation–SST feedback . This atmospheric bridge is stronger from the South Pacific than the North Pacific due to the northward displacement of the intertropical convergence zone and the associated northward advection of momentum anomalies. The equatorial ocean dynamics is also more strongly influenced by atmospheric circulation changes induced by the PSA mode than the NPO mode. In the PSA experiment, persistent and zonally coherent wind stress curl anomalies over the South Pacific affect the zonal mean depth of the equatorial thermocline and weaken the equatorial SST anomalies resulting from the atmospheric bridge. This oceanic adjustment serves as a delayed negative feedback and may be important for setting the time scales of tropical Pacific decadal variability.

     
    more » « less
  2. SUMMARY We present the first 16 months of data returned from a mobile array of 16 freely floating diving instruments, named mermaid for Mobile Earthquake Recording in Marine Areas by Independent Divers, launched in French Polynesia in late 2018. Our 16 are a subset of the 50 mermaid deployed over a number of cruises in this vast and understudied oceanic province as part of the collaborative South Pacific Plume Imaging and Modeling (SPPIM) project, under the aegis of the international EarthScope-Oceans consortium. Our objective is the hydroacoustic recording, from within the oceanic water column, of the seismic wavefield generated by earthquakes worldwide, and the nearly real-time transmission by satellite of these data, collected above and in the periphery of the South Pacific Superswell. This region, characterized by anomalously elevated oceanic crust and myriad seamounts, is believed to be the surface expression of deeply rooted mantle upwellings. Tomographically imaging Earth’s mantle under the South Pacific with data from these novel instruments requires a careful examination of the earthquake-to-mermaid traveltimes of the high-frequency P-wave detections within the windows selected for reporting by the discrimination algorithms on board. We discuss a workflow suitable for a fast-growing mobile sensor database to pick the relevant arrivals, match them to known earthquakes in global earthquake catalogues, calculate their traveltime residuals with respect to global seismic reference models, characterize their quality and estimate their uncertainty. We detail seismicity rates as recorded by mermaid over 16 months, quantify the completeness of our catalogue and discuss magnitude–distance relations of detectability for our network. The projected lifespan of an individual mermaid is 5 yr, allowing us to estimate the final size of the data set that will be available for future study. To prove their utility for seismic tomography we compare mermaid data quality against ‘traditional’ land seismometers and their low-cost Raspberry Shake counterparts, using waveforms recovered from instrumented island stations in the geographic neighbourhood of our floats. Finally, we provide the first analyses of traveltime anomalies for the new ray paths sampling the mantle under the South Pacific. 
    more » « less