• European Marine Science
• Other research productsclose
• Open Access close
• European Commission close
• EC|FP7|SP2 close
• GB close

Tropospheric ozone (O3) concentrations depend on a combination of hemispheric, regional, and local-scale processes. Estimates of how much O3 is produced locally vs. transported from further afield are essential in air quality management and regulatory policies. Here, a tagged-ozone mechanism within the Weather Research and Forecasting model coupled with chemistry (WRF-Chem) is used to quantify the contributions to surface O3 in the UK from anthropogenic nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions from inside and outside the UK during May–August 2015. The contribution of the different source regions to three regulatory O3 metrics is also examined. It is shown that model simulations predict the concentration and spatial distribution of surface O3 with a domain-wide mean bias of −3.7 ppbv. Anthropogenic NOx emissions from the UK and Europe account for 13 % and 16 %, respectively, of the monthly mean surface O3 in the UK, as the majority (71 %) of O3 originates from the hemispheric background. Hemispheric O3 contributes the most to concentrations in the north and the west of the UK with peaks in May, whereas European and UK contributions are most significant in the east, south-east, and London, i.e. the UK's most populated areas, intensifying towards June and July. Moreover, O3 from European sources is generally transported to the UK rather than produced in situ. It is demonstrated that more stringent emission controls over continental Europe, particularly in western Europe, would be necessary to improve the health-related metric MDA8 O3 above 50 and 60 ppbv. Emission controls over larger areas, such as the Northern Hemisphere, are instead required to lessen the impacts on ecosystems as quantified by the AOT40 metric.

In 2013, an ice core was recovered from Roosevelt Island in the Ross Sea, Antarctica, as part of the Roosevelt Island Climate Evolution (RICE) project. Roosevelt Island is located between two submarine troughs carved by paleo-ice-streams. The RICE ice core provides new important information about the past configuration of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and its retreat during the most recent deglaciation. In this work, we present the RICE17 chronology and discuss preliminary observations from the new records of methane, the isotopic composition of atmospheric molecular oxygen (δ18O-Oatm), the isotopic composition of atmospheric molecular nitrogen (δ15N-N2) and total air content (TAC). RICE17 is a composite chronology combining annual layer interpretations, gas synchronization, and firn modeling strategies in different sections of the core. An automated matching algorithm is developed for synchronizing the high-resolution section of the RICE gas records (60–720 m, 1971 CE to 30 ka) to corresponding records from the WAIS Divide ice core, while deeper sections are manually matched. Ice age for the top 343 m (2635 yr BP, before 1950 C.E.) is derived from annual layer interpretations and described in the accompanying paper by Winstrup et al. (2017). For deeper sections, the RICE17 ice age scale is based on the gas age constraints and the ice age-gas age offset estimated by a firn densification model. Novel aspects of this work include: 1) stratigraphic matching of centennial-scale variations in methane for pre-anthropogenic time periods, a strategy which will be applicable for developing precise chronologies for future ice cores, 2) the observation of centennial-scale variability in methane throughout the Holocene which suggests that similar variations during the late preindustrial period need not be anthropogenic, and 3) the observation of continuous climate records dating back to ∼ 65 ka which provide evidence that the Roosevelt Island Ice Dome was a constant feature throughout the last glacial period.

Much of our understanding of Earth's past climate states comes from the measurement of oxygen and carbon isotope variations in deep-sea benthic foraminifera. Yet, major intervals in those records that lack the temporal resolution and/or age control required to identify climate forcing and feedback mechanisms. Here we document 66 million years of global climate by a new high-fidelity Cenozoic global reference benthic carbon and oxygen isotope dataset (CENOGRID). Using recurrence analysis, we find that on timescales of millions of years Earth's climate can be grouped into Hothouse, Warmhouse, Coolhouse and Icehouse states separated by transitions related to changing greenhouse gas levels and the growth of polar ice sheets. Each Cenozoic climate state is paced by orbital cycles, but the response to radiative forcing is state dependent.

The marine silicon cycle is intrinsically linked with carbon cycling in the oceans via biological production of silica by a wide range of organisms. The stable silicon isotopic composition (denoted by δ30Si) of siliceous microfossils extracted from sediment cores can be used as an archive of past oceanic silicon cycling. However, the silicon isotopic composition of biogenic silica has only been measured in diatoms, sponges and radiolarians, and isotopic fractionation relative to seawater is entirely unknown for many other silicifiers. Furthermore, the biochemical pathways and mechanisms that determine isotopic fractionation during biosilicification remain poorly understood. Here, we present the first measurements of the silicon isotopic fractionation during biosilicification by loricate choanoflagellates, a group of protists closely related to animals. We cultured two species of choanoflagellates, Diaphanoeca grandis and Stephanoeca diplocostata, which showed consistently greater isotopic fractionation (approximately −5 ‰ to −7 ‰) than cultured diatoms (−0.5 ‰ to −2.1 ‰). Instead, choanoflagellate silicon isotopic fractionation appears to be more similar to sponges grown under similar dissolved silica concentrations. Our results highlight that there is a taxonomic component to silicon isotope fractionation during biosilicification, possibly via a shared or related biochemical transport pathway. These findings have implications for the use of biogenic silica δ30Si produced by different silicifiers as proxies for past oceanic change.

The concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is sensitive to changes in the depth at which sinking particulate organic matter is remineralized: often described as a change in the exponent “b” of the Martin curve. Sediment trap observations from deep and intermediate depths suggest there is a spatially heterogeneous pattern of b, particularly varying with latitude, but disagree over the exact spatial patterns. Here we use a biogeochemical model of the phosphorus cycle coupled with a steady-state representation of ocean circulation to explore the sensitivity of preformed phosphate and atmospheric CO2 to spatial variability in remineralization depths. A Latin hypercube sampling method is used to simultaneously vary the Martin curve independently within 15 different regions, as a basis for a regression-based analysis used to derive a quantitative measure of sensitivity. Approximately 30 % of the sensitivity of atmospheric CO2 to changes in remineralization depths is driven by changes in the subantarctic region (36 to 60∘ S) similar in magnitude to the Pacific basin despite the much smaller area and lower export production. Overall, the absolute magnitude of sensitivity is controlled by export production, but the relative spatial patterns in sensitivity are predominantly constrained by ocean circulation pathways. The high sensitivity in the subantarctic regions is driven by a combination of high export production and the high connectivity of these regions to regions important for the export of preformed nutrients such as the Southern Ocean and North Atlantic. Overall, regionally varying remineralization depths contribute to variability in CO2 of between around 5 and 15 ppm, relative to a global mean change in remineralization depth. Future changes in the environmental and ecological drivers of remineralization, such as temperature and ocean acidification, are expected to be most significant in the high latitudes where CO2 sensitivity to remineralization is also highest. The importance of ocean circulation pathways to the high sensitivity in subantarctic regions also has significance for past climates given the importance of circulation changes in the Southern Ocean.

Ice sheet numerical modeling is an important tool to estimate the dynamic contribution of the Antarctic ice sheet to sea level rise over the coming centuries. The influence of initial conditions on ice sheet model simulations, however, is still unclear. To better understand this influence, an initial state intercomparison exercise (initMIP) has been developed to compare, evaluate, and improve initialization procedures and estimate their impact on century-scale simulations. initMIP is the first set of experiments of the Ice Sheet Model Intercomparison Project for CMIP6 (ISMIP6), which is the primary Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) activity focusing on the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. Following initMIP-Greenland, initMIP-Antarctica has been designed to explore uncertainties associated with model initialization and spin-up and to evaluate the impact of changes in external forcings. Starting from the state of the Antarctic ice sheet at the end of the initialization procedure, three forward experiments are each run for 100 years: a control run, a run with a surface mass balance anomaly, and a run with a basal melting anomaly beneath floating ice. This study presents the results of initMIP-Antarctica from 25 simulations performed by 16 international modeling groups. The submitted results use different initial conditions and initialization methods, as well as ice flow model parameters and reference external forcings. We find a good agreement among model responses to the surface mass balance anomaly but large variations in responses to the basal melting anomaly. These variations can be attributed to differences in the extent of ice shelves and their upstream tributaries, the numerical treatment of grounding line, and the initial ocean conditions applied, suggesting that ongoing efforts to better represent ice shelves in continental-scale models should continue.

The impact of aerosols on cloud properties is one of the largest uncertainties in the anthropogenic radiative forcing of the climate. Significant progress has been made in constraining this forcing using observations, but uncertainty remains, particularly in the magnitude of cloud rapid adjustments to aerosol perturbations. Cloud liquid water path (LWP) is the leading control on liquid-cloud albedo, making it important to observationally constrain the aerosol impact on LWP. Previous modelling and observational studies have shown that multiple processes play a role in determining the LWP response to aerosol perturbations, but that the aerosol effect can be difficult to isolate. Following previous studies using mediating variables, this work investigates use of the relationship between cloud droplet number concentration (Nd) and LWP for constraining the role of aerosols. Using joint-probability histograms to account for the non-linear relationship, this work finds a relationship that is broadly consistent with previous studies. There is significant geographical variation in the relationship, partly due to role of meteorological factors (particularly relative humidity). The Nd–LWP relationship is negative in the majority of regions, suggesting that aerosol-induced LWP reductions could offset a significant fraction of the instantaneous radiative forcing from aerosol–cloud interactions (RFaci). However, variations in the Nd–LWP relationship in response to volcanic and shipping aerosol perturbations indicate that the Nd–LWP relationship overestimates the causal Nd impact on LWP due to the role of confounding factors. The weaker LWP reduction implied by these “natural experiments” means that this work provides an upper bound to the radiative forcing from aerosol-induced changes in the LWP.

We present a 2700-year annually resolved chronology and snow accumulation history for the Roosevelt Island Climate Evolution (RICE) ice core, Ross Ice Shelf, West Antarctica. The core adds information on past accumulation changes in an otherwise poorly constrained sector of Antarctica. The timescale was constructed by identifying annual cycles in high-resolution impurity records, and it constitutes the top part of the Roosevelt Island Ice Core Chronology 2017 (RICE17). Validation by volcanic and methane matching to the WD2014 chronology from the WAIS Divide ice core shows that the two timescales are in excellent agreement. In a companion paper, gas matching to WAIS Divide is used to extend the timescale for the deeper part of the core in which annual layers cannot be identified. Based on the annually resolved timescale, we produced a record of past snow accumulation at Roosevelt Island. The accumulation history shows that Roosevelt Island experienced slightly increasing accumulation rates between 700 BCE and 1300 CE, with an average accumulation of 0.25±0.02 m water equivalent (w.e.) per year. Since 1300 CE, trends in the accumulation rate have been consistently negative, with an acceleration in the rate of decline after the mid-17th century. The current accumulation rate at Roosevelt Island is 0.210±0.002 m w.e. yr−1 (average since 1965 CE, ±2σ), and it is rapidly declining with a trend corresponding to 0.8 mm yr−2. The decline observed since the mid-1960s is 8 times faster than the long-term decreasing trend taking place over the previous centuries, with decadal mean accumulation rates consistently being below average. Previous research has shown a strong link between Roosevelt Island accumulation rates and the location and intensity of the Amundsen Sea Low, which has a significant impact on regional sea-ice extent. The decrease in accumulation rates at Roosevelt Island may therefore be explained in terms of a recent strengthening of the ASL and the expansion of sea ice in the eastern Ross Sea. The start of the rapid decrease in RICE accumulation rates observed in 1965 CE may thus mark the onset of significant increases in regional sea-ice extent.

We present an extension to the carbon-centric Grid Enabled Integrated Earth system model (cGEnIE) that explicitly accounts for the growth and interaction of an arbitrary number of plankton species. The new package (ECOGEM) replaces the implicit, flux-based parameterisation of the plankton community currently employed, with explicitly resolved plankton populations and ecological dynamics. In ECOGEM, any number of plankton species, with ecophysiological traits (e.g. growth and grazing rates) assigned according to organism size and functional group (e.g. phytoplankton and zooplankton) can be incorporated at runtime. We illustrate the capability of the marine ecology enabled Earth system model (EcoGEnIE) by comparing results from one configuration of ECOGEM (with eight generic phytoplankton and zooplankton size classes) to climatological and seasonal observations. We find that the new ecological components of the model show reasonable agreement with both global-scale climatological and local-scale seasonal data. We also compare EcoGEnIE results to the existing biogeochemical incarnation of cGEnIE. We find that the resulting global-scale distributions of phosphate, iron, dissolved inorganic carbon, alkalinity, and oxygen are similar for both iterations of the model. A slight deterioration in some fields in EcoGEnIE (relative to the data) is observed, although we make no attempt to re-tune the overall marine cycling of carbon and nutrients here. The increased capabilities of EcoGEnIE in this regard will enable future exploration of the ecological community on much longer timescales than have previously been examined in global ocean ecosystem models and particularly for past climates and global biogeochemical cycles.

The last deglaciation represents the most recent example of natural global warming associated with large-scale climate changes. In addition to the long-term global temperature increase, the last deglaciation onset is punctuated by a sequence of abrupt changes in the Northern Hemisphere. Such interplay between orbital- and millennial-scale variability is widely documented in paleoclimatic records but the underlying mechanisms are not fully understood. Limitations arise from the difficulty in constraining the sequence of events between external forcing, high- and low- latitude climate, and environmental changes. Greenland ice cores provide sub-decadal-scale records across the last deglaciation and contain fingerprints of climate variations occurring in different regions of the Northern Hemisphere. Here, we combine new ice d-excess and 17O-excess records, tracing changes in the midlatitudes, with ice δ18O records of polar climate. Within Heinrich Stadial 1, we demonstrate a decoupling between climatic conditions in Greenland and those of the lower latitudes. While Greenland temperature remains mostly stable from 17.5 to 14.7 ka, significant change in the midlatitudes of the northern Atlantic takes place at ∼16.2 ka, associated with warmer and wetter conditions of Greenland moisture sources. We show that this climate modification is coincident with abrupt changes in atmospheric CO2 and CH4 concentrations recorded in an Antarctic ice core. Our coherent ice core chronological framework and comparison with other paleoclimate records suggests a mechanism involving two-step freshwater fluxes in the North Atlantic associated with a southward shift of the Intertropical Convergence Zone.