Abstract
Accurate measurement of the concentration and fluxes of a wide range of dissolved and participate materials in the water column is need to quantify the global cycling of heat, water and chemical constituents1. An important aspect of any Global Ocean Flux study is the lateral transport of materials at basin or global scales; to study lateral transport, useful tracers of water-mass movements must be identified. Here we report that Mn is rapidly removed (−0.027 µmol m−3 yr−1) from the north-east Pacific Gyre dissolved-Mn maximum onto biogenic particles sinking through the oxygen minimum (500−1,100 m). To support removal, dissolved Mn must be supplied within the oxygen minimum at net advective horizontal transport rates of ˜0.6−0.9 cm s−1. The high affinity of dissolved Mn for particles, together with the readily discernible differences in inshore/offshore dissolved distributions, indicate that Mn Is a chemical tracer with great potential in future studies of large-scale circulation processes in the ocean1.
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Martin, J., Knauer, G. Lateral transport of Mn in the north-east Pacific Gyre oxygen minimum. Nature 314, 524–526 (1985). https://doi.org/10.1038/314524a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/314524a0
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