Does the Strength of the Carbonate Pump Change with Ocean Stratification and Acidification and How?

Key questions to be addressed are (i) Does the strength of the carbonate pump change in response to ocean acidification and stratification? (ii) Is the CaCO3 export more closely associated with the tightly recycling picoplankton and nanoplankton ecosystems than the blooming microplankton?

(iii) What is the role of interactions between organic particle fluxes and the saturation state of seawater with respect to CaCO3 minerals in the dissolution of CaCO3 in the water column and sediments? The above three questions will be addressed in a unified model-observation framework where a suite of global models of the carbonate pump will be objectively assessed using a wide range of observations. An already assembled and analyzed global database of ocean biogeochemical tracers and sediment traps will be combined with 3-D numerical model frameworks.