Abstract
Abstract. The Western MEDiterranean Sea BioGeochemical Climatology (BGC-WMED, https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.930447) (Belgacem et al., 2021) presented here is a product derived from quality-controlled in situ observations. Annual mean gridded nutrient fields for the period 1981–2017 and its sub-periods 1981–2004 and 2005–2017 on a horizontal 1/4∘ × 1/4∘ grid have been produced. The biogeochemical climatology is built on 19 depth levels and for the dissolved inorganic nutrients nitrate, phosphate and orthosilicate. To generate smooth and homogeneous interpolated fields, the method of the variational inverse model (VIM) was applied. A sensitivity analysis was carried out to assess the comparability of the data product with the observational data. The BGC-WMED was then compared to other available data products, i.e., the MedBFM biogeochemical reanalysis of the Mediterranean Sea and the World Ocean Atlas 2018 (WOA18) (its biogeochemical part). The new product reproduces common features with more detailed patterns and agrees with previous records. This suggests a good reference for the region and for the scientific community for the understanding of inorganic nutrient variability in the western Mediterranean Sea, in space and in time, but our new climatology can also be used to validate numerical simulations, making it a reference data product.
Highlights
Ocean life relies on the loads of marine macro-nutrients and other micro-nutrients within the euphotic layer
DIVA has been widely applied to oceanographic climatologies, such as the SeaDataNet climatological products (Simoncelli et al, 2014, 2016, 2019, 2020a, b, c, 2021; Iona et al, 2018), EMODnet chemistry regional climatologies (Míguez et al, 2019), the Adriatic Sea climatologies by Lipizer et al (2014) or the Black Sea (Capet et al, 2014), and it was applied to generate the global interior climatology GLODAPv2.2016b (Lauvset et al, 2016)
The final result consists of gridded fields of mapped climatological means of inorganic nutrients for the periods 1981– 2004 and 2005–2017 and the whole period of 1981–2017, produced with the variational inverse model (VIM) described in Sect. 3, using data of Sect
Summary
Ocean life relies on the loads of marine macro-nutrients (nitrate, phosphate and orthosilicate) and other micro-nutrients within the euphotic layer. They fuel phytoplankton growth, maintaining the equilibrium of the food web. These nutrients may reach deeper levels through vertical mixing and remineralization of sinking organic matter. In the Mediterranean, the surface layer is usually nutrient-depleted. Most studies show that nitrate is the most common limiting factor for primary production in the global ocean (Moore et al, 2013), while others show evidence that. 21 standard depths 0–1100 m (nitrate) 0–1500 m (phosphate) 0–1500 m (silicate). Belgacem et al (2021)
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