Ocean chemistry, ocean warming, and emerging hypoxia: Commentary

For 50 years, ocean scientists have represented deep sea biogeochemical rates as a temperature independent function of depth with form R = R(0)e(-alpha z) where z is depth in km. We show this resembles, but is not an identity for, a form of the classical Arrhenius equation K=Ae(-Ea/RT) where T is temperature in Kelvins, R is the gas constant (8.314 JK(-1) mol(-1)), and A is a preexponential factor. For a deep Sargasso Sea data set, we find oxygen consumption rates are accurately represented by an Arrhenius process with apparent activation energy of 86.5 kJ mol(-1), and Q(10)=3.63.