Abstract. Low oxygen conditions, often referred to as oxygen deficiency, occur regularly in the North Sea, a temperate European shelf sea. Stratification represents a major process regulating the seasonal dynamics of bottom oxygen, yet, lowest oxygen conditions in the North Sea do not occur in the regions of strongest stratification. This suggests that stratification is an important prerequisite for oxygen deficiency, but that the complex interaction between hydrodynamics and the biological processes drives its evolution.In this study we use the ecosystem model HAMSOM-ECOHAM to provide a general characterisation of the different zones of the North Sea with respect to oxygen, and to quantify the impact of the different physical and biological factors driving the oxygen dynamics inside the entire subthermocline volume and directly above the bottom.With respect to oxygen dynamics, the North Sea can be subdivided into three different zones: (1) a highly productive, non-stratified coastal zone, (2) a productive, seasonally stratified zone with a small sub-thermocline volume, and (3) a productive, seasonally stratified zone with a large subthermocline volume. Type 2 reveals the highest susceptibility to oxygen deficiency due to sufficiently long stratification periods ( > 60 days) accompanied by high surface productivity resulting in high biological consumption, and a small subthermocline volume implying both a small initial oxygen inventory and a strong influence of the biological consumption on the oxygen concentration.Year-to-year variations in the oxygen conditions are caused by variations in primary production, while spatial differences can be attributed to differences in stratification and water depth. The large sub-thermocline volume dominates the oxygen dynamics in the northern central and northern North Sea and makes this region insusceptible to oxygen deficiency. In the southern North Sea the strong tidal mixing inhibits the development of seasonal stratification which protects this area from the evolution of low oxygen conditions. In contrast, the southern central North Sea is highly susceptible to low oxygen conditions (type 2).We furthermore show that benthic diagenetic processes represent the main oxygen consumers in the bottom layer, consistently accounting for more than 50 % of the overall consumption. Thus, primary production followed by remineralisation of organic matter under stratified conditions constitutes the main driver for the evolution of oxygen deficiency in the southern central North Sea. By providing these valuable insights, we show that ecosystem models can be a useful tool for the interpretation of observations and the estimation of the impact of anthropogenic drivers on the North Sea oxygen conditions.

In high-nutrient-low-chlorophyll regions, phytoplankton growth is limited by the availability of water-soluble iron. The eruption of Kasatochi volcano in August 2008 led to ash deposition into the iron-limited NE Pacific Ocean. Volcanic ash released iron upon contact with seawater and generated a massive phytoplankton bloom. Here we investigate this event with a one-dimensional ocean biogeochemical column model to illuminate the ocean response to iron fertilisation by volcanic ash. The results indicate that the added iron triggered a phytoplankton bloom in the summer of 2008. Associated with this bloom, macronutrient concentrations such as nitrate and silicate decline and zooplankton biomass is enhanced in the ocean mixed layer. The simulated development of the drawdown of carbon dioxide and increase of pH in surface seawater is in good agreement with available observations. Sensitivity studies with different supply dates of iron to the ocean emphasise the favourable oceanic conditions in the NE Pacific to generate massive phytoplankton blooms in particular during July and August in comparison to other months. By varying the amount of volcanic ash and associated bio-available iron supplied to the ocean, model results demonstrate that the NE Pacific Ocean has higher, but limited capabilities to consume CO2 after iron fertilisation than those observed after the volcanic eruption of Kasatochi

For the North Sea, a semienclosed shelf sea in the northeastern North Atlantic, the seasonal and annual CO2 air‐sea fluxes (ASF) had been estimated for 2001 and 2002 in earlier work. The underlying observations, ΔpCO2, salinity, and temperature had been combined with 6‐hourly wind data derived from ERA40 reanalysis. In order to assess the impact of different wind data products on the computation of CO2 ASF, we compared ERA40 wind data with coastDat data derived from the nonhydrostatic regional climate model COSMO‐CLM. From the four observational months September, November, February, and May all but the May data show higher wind speeds for coastDat than for ERA40, especially off the Norwegian, UK, and continental coasts. Largest differences occur in the northern offshore areas. The comparison with observed wind data supports this feature generally: At Helgoland, an island in the German Bight, and at the Belgium pile “Westhinder” the ERA40 data underestimate both, the coastDat data and the observations. Wind observations for two Norwegian North Sea platforms were available: At the northern station “Troll” off the Norwegian coast the coastDat data overestimate the observations in winter. At “Ekofisk” in the central North Sea the ERA40 data fit the observations well, while the coastDat data slightly overestimate the observational data in all months but in May. The corresponding CO2 ASF estimates show strongest deviations off the Norwegian coast. Using different bulk formulas for determining the net annual ASF resulted in differences due to different wind products of up to 34%.

Abstract. The problem of low oxygen conditions, often referred to as hypoxia, occurs regularly in the North Sea, a temperate European shelf sea. Stratification represents a major process regulating the seasonal dynamics of bottom oxygen. However, lowest oxygen conditions in the North Sea do not occur in the regions of strongest stratification. This suggests that stratification is an important prerequisite for hypoxia, but that the complex interaction between hydrodynamics and the biological processes drives its development. In this study we use the ecosystem model HAMSOM-ECOHAM5 to provide a general characteristic of the different North Sea oxygen regimes, and to quantify the impact of the different physical and biological factors driving the oxygen dynamics below the thermocline and in the bottom layer. We show that the North Sea can be subdivided into three different regimes in terms of oxygen dynamics: (1) a highly productive, non-stratified coastal regime, (2) a productive, seasonally stratified regime with a small sub-thermocline volume, and (3) a productive, seasonally stratified regime with a large sub-thermocline volume, with regime 2 being highly susceptible to hypoxic conditions. Our analysis of the different processes driving the oxygen development reveals that inter-annual variations in the oxygen conditions are caused by variations in primary production, while spatial differences can be attributed to differences in stratification and water depth. In addition, we show that benthic bacteria represent the main oxygen consumers in the bottom layer, consistently accounting for more than 50 % of the overall consumption. By providing these valuable insights, we show that ecosystem models can be a useful tool for the interpretation of observations and the estimation of the impact of anthropogenic drivers on the North Sea oxygen conditions.

The influence of large-scale oceanic circulation on salinity in the northern North Sea has lead to the hypothesis that nutrient concentrations in this region are also driven by remote oceanic anomalies. Here, using a newly established biogeochemical data set of the North Sea, we show that interannual to decadal variability in winter nutrient concentrations exhibits distinct phase deviations from salinity. The variability in salinity is explained by zonal shifts in the position of the subpolar front (SPF) in the eastern North Atlantic and the associated advective delay. However, the high correlation and absence of advective delay between the position of the SPF and winter nutrient concentrations in the Shetland region (59-61°N, 1°W to 3°E) point to the role of atmospheric variability in driving concurrent changes in winter nutrient concentrations and the SPF position. Our analysis suggests that the prevailing wind direction and local distribution of winter nutrient concentrations together determine the interannual to decadal variability in winter nutrient concentrations in this region. In the analyzed observations, we find a strong spatial gradient in mean winter nutrient concentrations northwest of the Shetland region, which is absent in salinity. The horizontal shift of this spatial gradient, forced by changes in wind direction, has a larger influence on winter nutrient concentration in the Shetland region than the nutrient signal in oceanic anomalies originating from the eastern subpolar North Atlantic. Overall, we conclude that interannual to decadal variability in the observed nutrient concentrations is mainly driven by atmospheric variability here expressed as wind direction. Plain Language Summary In many marine areas the winter concentration of nutrients determines the biological production of the following year. This is also true for the northern North Sea. Using a large data collection, we analyze salinity and nutrient concentrations there. We find salinity governed by the extension and retraction of a large gyre in the North Atlantic. We see consequences of the gyre dynamics 2 years later in salinity in the North Sea. Our idea was that nutrients behave similar with a time lag of 2 years. But we did not find this relation for nutrients. Instead, we find a surprising strong concurrent relation between nutrients in the North Sea and the North Atlantic gyre dynamics. As the oceanic signal cannot be transmitted without time lag, we investigate meteorological features, which work on both the eastern North Atlantic and the North Sea concurrently. We find wind direction induced by large meteorological pressure patterns, responsible for the variability of the gyre dynamics and local shifts of water masses with strong horizontal gradients in the northern North Sea. In summary, salinity variations in the northern North Sea are governed by large-scale oceanic circulation, whereas winter nutrient variations are mainly driven by atmospheric variability.