Journal
SCIENCE
Volume 333, Issue 6040, Pages 336-339Publisher
AMER ASSOC ADVANCEMENT SCIENCE
DOI: 10.1126/science.1202422
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Funding
- Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation
- NSF [OCE-0851483, OCE-0851497]
- Directorate For Geosciences [0747533] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
- Div Atmospheric & Geospace Sciences [0747533] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
- Division Of Ocean Sciences
- Directorate For Geosciences [0851483] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
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Oxygen (O-2) is a critical constraint on marine ecosystems. As oceanic O-2 falls to hypoxic concentrations, habitability for aerobic organisms decreases rapidly. We show that the spatial extent of hypoxia is highly sensitive to small changes in the ocean's O-2 content, with maximum responses at suboxic concentrations where anaerobic metabolisms predominate. In model-based reconstructions of historical oxygen changes, the world's largest suboxic zone, in the Pacific Ocean, varies in size by a factor of 2. This is attributable to climate-driven changes in the depth of the tropical and subtropical thermocline that have multiplicative effects on respiration rates in low-O-2 water. The same mechanism yields even larger fluctuations in the rate of nitrogen removal by denitrification, creating a link between decadal climate oscillations and the nutrient limitation of marine photosynthesis.
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