Seafloor organic carbon flux output from the NEMO-MEDUSA model

This output was produced by a simulation using a coupled ocean physics and marine biogeochemistry model. The physical ocean submodel was the Nucleus for European Modeling of the Ocean (NEMO) physical ocean model (Madec, 2014), run here in a global 1/12-degree resolution configuration (ORCA0083). The marine biogeochemistry submodel was the Model of Ecosystem Dynamics, nutrient Utilisation, Sequestration and Acidification (MEDUSA-2), an intermediate-complexity plankton ecosystem model (Yool et al., 2013). The horizontal resolution of this configuration of NEMO has non-uniform grid cells ranging 2 to 9 km in size (mean 7.5 km), with 75 vertical depth levels (31 levels between the surface and 200 m depth). Sea-ice is represented in the model by the Louvian‐la‐Neuve Ice Model (LIM2) (Fichefet, & Maqueda, M. a. M., 1997; Goosse & Fichefet, 1999). The configuration was forced at the air-sea interface with version 5.2 of the DRAKKAR forcing set (DFS) (Brodeau et al., 2010). DFS 5.2 is based on ERA40 reanalysis data, comprising of 6‐hourly means for wind, humidity, and atmospheric temperature, daily means for radiative fluxes (both longwave and shortwave), and monthly means for precipitation. A monthly climatology was used for river runoff, taken from the CORE2 reanalysis (Brodeau et al., 2010; Timmermann et al., 2005). The resulting model hindcast was created using this forcing set for the period 1958–2015, with marine biogeochemistry initialised in 1990.

This archive includes the flux of organic carbon reaching the seafloor and the area of the grid cells for the global domain. In MEDUSA, the seafloor flux is the sum of slow- and fast-sinking detrital particles that reach the base of the water column and enter the benthic submodel of MEDUSA. In general, away from shallow water regions (< 200 m), this flux is dominated by fast-sinking material produced by ecological processes associated with the large components of MEDUSA.

The specific subset of output used was drawn from the decadal period 2006-2015, and was regridded from the non-uniform ORCA0083 grid to a regular 1/12-degree grid. Output processing was undertaken by A. Yool (axy@noc.ac.uk; National Oceanography Centre, Southampton UK).

In addition to the netCDF files, text file dumps of their contents are included to assist with interpretation.

References:

Brodeau, L., Barnier, B., Treguier, A.‐M., Penduff, T., & Gulev, S. (2010). An ERA40‐based atmospheric forcing for global ocean circulation models. Ocean Modelling, 31, 88–104.

Fichefet, T., & Maqueda, M. a. M. (1997). Sensitivity of a global sea ice model to the treatment of ice thermodynamics and dynamics. Journal of Geophysical Research, Oceans, 102, 12,609–12,646.

Goosse, H., & Fichefet, T. (1999). Importance of ice‐ocean interactions for the global ocean circulation: A model study. Journal of Geophysical Research, Oceans, 104, 23,337–23,355.

Kelly, S., Popova, E., Aksenov, Y., Marsh, R., & Yool, A. (2018). Lagrangian modeling of Arctic Ocean circulation pathways: Impact of advection on spread of pollutants. J. Geophys. Res. Oceans, 123, 2882‐2902, doi: 10.1002/2017JC013460.

Madec, G. (2014). "NEMO Ocean engine" (draft edition r5171) "NEMO Ocean engine" (draft edition r5171). Note du Pôle de modélisation, Institut Pierre‐Simon Laplace (IPSL), France, 27, 1288–1619.

Timmermann, R., Goosse, H., Madec, G., Fichefet, T., Ethe, C., & Dulière, V. (2005). On the representation of high latitude processes in the ORCA‐LIM global coupled sea ice–ocean model. Ocean Modelling, 8, 175–201.

Yool, A., Popova, E.E. and Anderson, T.R. (2013).  MEDUSA-2.0: an intermediate complexity biogeochemical model of the marine carbon cycle for climate change and ocean acidification studies.  Geoscientific Model Development 6, 1767-1811, doi: 10.5194/gmd-6-1767-2013.