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This page features highlight articles from EGU's open access journals Biogeosciences, Geoscientific Model Development and SOIL. These articles of particular interest are selected by journal editors.

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Tracing water masses with 129I and 236U in the subpolar North Atlantic along the GEOTRACES GA01 section

Biogeosciences
DOI 10.5194/bg-15-5545-2018
18 September 2018

The investigation of water mass transport pathways and timescales is important to understand the global ocean circulation. Following earlier studies, we use artificial radionuclides introduced to the oceans in the 1950s to investigate the water transport in the subpolar North Atlantic (SPNA). For the first time, we combine measurements of the long-lived iodine-129 and uranium-236 to confirm earlier findings/hypotheses and to better understand shallow and deep ventilation processes in the SPNA.

sympl (v. 0.4.0) and climt (v. 0.15.3) – towards a flexible framework for building model hierarchies in Python

In the same way that the fruit fly or the yeast cell serve as model systems in biology, climate scientists use a range of computer models to gain a fundamental understanding of our climate system. These models range from extremely simple models that can run on your phone to those that require supercomputers. Sympl and climt are packages that make it easy for climate scientists to build a hierarchy of such models using Python, which facilitates easy to read and self-documenting models.

Integrated management of a Swiss cropland is not sufficient to preserve its soil carbon pool in the long term

It is of great interest to know whether croplands act as a net source or sink of atmospheric CO₂and if soil carbon © stocks are preserved over long timescales due to the role of C in soil fertility. For a cropland in Switzerland it was found that managing the field under the Swiss framework of the Proof of Ecological Performance (PEP) resulted in soil C losses of 18.0 %. Additional efforts are needed to bring Swiss management practices closer to the goal of preserving soil C in the long term.

The Variable Infiltration Capacity model version 5 (VIC-5): infrastructure improvements for new applications and reproducibility

Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC) is a widely used hydrologic model. This paper documents the development of VIC version 5, which includes a reconfiguration of the model source code to support a wider range of modeling applications. It also represents a significant step forward for the VIC user community in terms of support for a range of modeling applications, reproducibility, and scientific robustness.

Dissolved Pb and Pb isotopes in the North Atlantic from the GEOVIDE transect (GEOTRACES GA-01) and their decadal evolution

During a French cruise in the northern North Atlantic Ocean in 2014, seawater samples were collected for dissolved Pb and Pb isotope analysis. Lead concentrations were highest in subsurface water flowing out of the Mediterranean Sea. The recently formed Labrador Sea Water (LSW) is much lower in Pb concentration than older LSW found in the West European Basin. Comparison of North Atlantic data from 1981 to 2014 shows decreasing Pb concentrations down to ~ 2500 m depth.

Developing a global operational seasonal hydro-meteorological forecasting system: GloFAS-Seasonal v1.0

Global overviews of upcoming flood and drought events are key for many applications from agriculture to disaster risk reduction. Seasonal forecasts are designed to provide early indications of such events weeks or even months in advance. This paper introduces GloFAS-Seasonal, the first operational global-scale seasonal hydro-meteorological forecasting system producing openly available forecasts of high and low river flow out to 4 months ahead.

Ideas and perspectives: Strengthening the biogeosciences in environmental research networks

As knowledge in biology and geology explodes, science becomes increasingly specialised. Given the overlap of the environmental sciences, however, the explosion in knowledge inevitably creates opportunities for interconnecting the biogeosciences. Here, 30 scientists emphasise the opportunities for biogeoscience collaborations across the world’s remarkable long-term environmental research networks that can advance science and engage larger scientific and public audiences.

In-depth characterization of diazotroph activity across the western tropical South Pacific hotspot of N₂ fixation (OUTPACE cruise)

Here we report N₂ fixation rates from a ∼ 4000 km transect in the western and central tropical South Pacific, a particularly undersampled region in the world ocean.

A 1500-year multiproxy record of coastal hypoxia from the northern Baltic Sea indicates unprecedented deoxygenation over the 20th century

Oxygen deficiency is a major environmental problem deteriorating seafloor habitats especially in the coastal ocean with large human impact. Here we apply a wide set of chemical and physical analyses to a 1500-year long sediment record and show that, although long-term climate variability has modulated seafloor oxygenation in the coastal northern Baltic Sea, the oxygen loss over the 20th century is unprecedentedly severe, emphasizing the need to reduce anthropogenic nutrient input in the future.

Transfer of diazotroph-derived nitrogen to the planktonic food web across gradients of N₂ fixation activity and diversity in the western tropical South Pacific Ocean

Biological dinitrogen (N₂) fixation provides the major source of new nitrogen (N) to the open ocean, contributing more than atmospheric deposition and riverine inputs to the N supply. Yet the fate of the diazotroph-derived N (DDN) in the planktonic food web is poorly understood. The main goals of this study were (i) to quantify how much of DDN is released to the dissolved pool during N₂ fixation and how much is transferred to bacteria, phytoplankton and zooplankton, and (ii) to compare the DDN release and transfer efficiencies under contrasting N₂ fixation activity and diversity in the oligotrophic waters of the western tropical South Pacific Ocean.

BG Biogeosciences Highlight articles