Alhassan Yazeed, Siekmann Ivo, Petrovskii Sergei
Mathematics Department, College of Science, Jouf University, P.O. Box 2014, Sakaka, Saudi Arabia.
School of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics, Liverpool John Moore University, Liverpool, UK.
Sci Rep. 2024 Sep 27;14(1):22248. doi: 10.1038/s41598-024-72207-3.
Processes determining the amount and spatial distribution of dissolved oxygen in the ocean have been a focus of intense research over the last two decades. Anomalies known as Oxygen Minimum Zones (OMZs) have been attracting growing attention, in particular because their growth is believed to be a result of the global environmental change. Comprehensive understanding of factors contributing to and/or controlling the emergence and evolution of OMZs is still lacking though. OMZs are usually thought to result from an interplay between the oxygen transport through the water column from the ocean surface and variable oxygen solubility at different water temperature. In this paper, we suggest a different, novel mechanism of the OMZ formation relating it to the oxygen production in phytoplankton photosynthesis in a stratified ocean. We consider a simple, conceptual model of the coupled phytoplankton-oxygen dynamics and show that the model predictions are in qualitative agreement with some relevant field observations.
在过去二十年中，决定海洋中溶解氧含量和空间分布的过程一直是深入研究的重点。被称为氧最小值区（OMZs）的异常现象越来越受到关注，特别是因为人们认为它们的扩大是全球环境变化的结果。然而，目前仍缺乏对导致和/或控制氧最小值区出现及演变的因素的全面理解。氧最小值区通常被认为是海洋表面通过水柱的氧气传输与不同水温下可变的氧气溶解度之间相互作用的结果。在本文中，我们提出了一种不同的、新颖的氧最小值区形成机制，将其与分层海洋中浮游植物光合作用产生的氧气联系起来。我们考虑了一个简单的浮游植物 - 氧气动力学耦合概念模型，并表明模型预测与一些相关的实地观测结果在定性上是一致的。
