Modeling study of phytoplankton and sea ice algal production and phenology in the Antarctic Ocean

Abstract:

The magnitude and phenology of the phytoplankton and sea ice algal production in the Antarctic Ocean were investigated using a coupled ice-ocean-ecosystem model (POP-CICE). This model is the oceanic part of the climate model CESM with global GX1 grid and run from 1958 to 2009 under the atmospheric forcing CORE2 version. The primary production and phenology in the Arctic Ocean has been successfully simulated and studied using this model as released in CICE 5.0. This talk will focus on the model analysis of the Antarctic Ocean to the south of 45S. The model results were validated with the remote sensing sea ice extent (1979-2009), sea surface Chl-a (1998-2009) and in situ observations. Sea ice extent has slightly increased in the Antarctic over the last decades and we will show how the primary production and its timing vary in response to the sea ice conditions in seasonal to interannual time scales.