Identification

Title

How does the Pinatubo eruption influence our understanding of long-term changes in ocean biogeochemistry?

Abstract

Pinatubo erupted during the first decadal survey of ocean biogeochemistry, embedding its climate fingerprint into foundational ocean biogeochemical observations and complicating the interpretation of long-term biogeochemical change. Here, we quantify the influence of the Pinatubo climate perturbation on externally forced decadal and multi-decadal changes in key ocean biogeochemical quantities using a large ensemble simulation of the Community Earth System Model designed to isolate the effects of Pinatubo, which cleanly captures the ocean biogeochemical response to the eruption. We find increased uptake of apparent oxygen utilization and preindustrial carbon over 1993-2003. Nearly 100% of the forced response in these quantities are attributable to Pinatubo. The eruption caused enhanced ventilation of the North Atlantic, as evidenced by deep ocean chlorofluorocarbon changes that appear 10-15 years after the eruption. Our results help contextualize observed change and contribute to improved constraints on uncertainty in the global carbon budget and ocean deoxygenation.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d7tb1c2v

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2024-01-28T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Copyright author(s). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata date

2025-07-10T20:04:45.628930

Metadata language

eng; USA