Wind, wave and current interactions appear key for quantifying cross-shelf transport and carbon export; new knowledge and the potential of SKIM to enable monitoring

TL;DR

This study highlights the importance of wind, wave, and current interactions in cross-shelf transport and carbon export, demonstrating SKIM satellite's potential to monitor these processes globally.

Contribution

It introduces the significance of ageostrophic components like Stokes drift in cross-shelf transport and advocates for SKIM satellite data to monitor the continental shelf carbon pump.

Findings

Geostrophic and wind-driven Ekman processes vary by location and season.

Stokes drift from waves can significantly influence surface transport.

SKIM satellite can measure total cross-shelf currents for monitoring.

Abstract

The highly heterogeneous and biologically active continental shelf-seas are important components of the oceanic carbon sink. Carbon rich water from shelf-seas is exported at depth to the open ocean, a process known as the continental shelf pump, with open-ocean surface water moving (transported) onto the shelf driving the export at depth. Existing methods to study shelf-wide exchange focus on the wind or geostrophic currents, often ignoring their combined effect, spatial heterogeniety or any other ageostrophic components. Here we investigate the influence that wind, wave and current interactions can have on surface transport and carbon export across continental shelves. Using a 21 year global re-analysis dataset we confirm that geostrophic and wind driven Ekman processes are important for the transport of water onto shelf seas; but the dominance of each is location and season dependent. A global wave model re-analysis shows that one type of ageostrophic flow, Stokes drift due to waves, can also be significant. A regional case study using two submesocale model simulations identifies that up to 100% of the cross-shelf surface flow in European seas can be due to ageostrophic components. Using these results and grouping shelf-seas based on their observed carbon accumulation rates shows that differences in rates are consistent with imbalances between the processes driving atmosphere-ocean exchange at the surface and those driving carbon export at depth. Therefore expected future changes in wind and wave climate support the need to monitor cross-shelf transport and the size of the continental shelf-sea carbon pump. The results presented show that the Sea Surface Kinematics Multiscale monitoring satellite mission (SKIM), will be capable of providing measurements of the total cross-shelf current, which are now needed to enable routine monitoring of the global continental shelf-sea carbon pump.