Noble gas tracers of ventilation during deep-water formation in the Weddell Sea

To explore the dynamics and implications of incomplete air-sea equilibration during the formation of abyssal water masses, we simulated noble gases in the Estimating the Circulation & Climate of the Ocean (ECCO) global ocean state estimate. A novel computation approach utilizing a matrix-free Newton-Krylov (MFNK) scheme was applied to quickly compute the periodic seasonal solutions for noble gas tracers. MFNK allows for quick computation of a cyclo-stationary solution for tracers (i.e., a spun-up, repeating seasonal cycle), which would otherwise be computationally infeasible due to the long time scale of dynamic adjustment of the abyssal ocean (1000's of years). A suite of experiments isolates individual processes, including atmospheric pressure effects, the solubility pump and air-sea bubble fluxes. In addition to these modeled processes, a volumetric contribution of 0.28 ± 0.07% of glacial melt water is required to reconcile deep-water observations in the Weddell Sea. Another primary finding of our work is that the saturation anomaly of heavy noble gases in model simulations is in excess of two-fold more negative than is suggested from Weddell Sea observations. This result suggests that model water masses are insufficiently ventilated prior to subduction and thus there is insufficient communication between atmosphere and ocean at high latitudes. The discrepancy between noble gas observations and ECCO simulations highlights that important inadequacies remain in how we model high-latitude ventilation with large implications for the oceanic uptake and storage of carbon.