Inorganic Carbon Transport and Dynamics in the Florida Straits

Abstract

The North Atlantic Ocean plays an important role in the uptake of anthropogenic CO 2 and the global carbon cycle (Friedlingstein et al., 2022;Sarmiento et al., 1995;Takahashi et al., 2009). The northward carbon flux through the Florida Straits is a major contributor to the North Atlantic Ocean carbon budget (Rosón et al., 2003). The quantification of natural and anthropogenic carbon transport across the Florida Straits contributes to the estimation and understanding of the North Atlantic and global carbon budget (Brown et al., 2021;Rosón et al., 2003).In the Florida Straits, the Florida Current passes through productive and diverse marine ecosystems, including extensive shallow and deep coral reef ecosystems (Lee et al., 1992;Schmitz & Richardson, 1991;Sponaugle et al., 2005). Therefore, understanding both the physical and chemical dynamics in the Florida Straits has important biological and ecosystem implications. Within our study region, recent numerical model results suggest that

Coral Reef Carbonate Chemistry Reveals Interannual, Seasonal, and Spatial Impacts on Ocean Acidification Off Florida

“…These rates increased from the mid‐channel to the oceanic zones, with offshore reefs experiencing trends comparable to those recorded at the oceanic stations (Figure 2). The rates calculated here are higher than the nearest comparable surface ocean CO 2 rates estimated as part of the Bermuda Atlantic Times‐series Study (BATS) from 1982 to 2012 (DIC = 1.37 ± 0.07 μmol yr −1 , p CO 2 = 1.69 ± 0.11 μatm yr −1 , pH = −0.0017 ± 0.0001 years −1 , Ω Ar = −0.0095 ± 0.0007 years −1 ; Bates et al., 2014); as well as the trends estimated in surface waters of the Florida Straits from 2002 to 2018 (DIC = 0.96 ± 0.16 μmol yr −1 , pH = −0.0021 ± 0.0039 years −1 , Ω Ar = −0.0061 ± 0.0017 years −1 ; Xu et al., 2022). However, they are less pronounced than those estimated from the nearest surface coastal CO 2 time series data in the Florida Keys from 2012 to 2016 ( p CO 2 = 11.44 ± 0.26 μatm yr −1 ; Chen & Hu, 2019).…”