GO-SWACE
Combining NASA PACE, SWOT, and Argo floats to uncover the eddy dynamics impacting phytoplankton community groups.
S. E. Lang, A.E. Jones-Kellett, M. Cornec, T. Snow, V.P. Kocsis, M. Masud-Ul-Alam, M. M. Omand. Impacts of horizontal and vertical eddy dynamics on phytoplankton assemblages diagnosed with PACE, SWOT, and BGC-Argo. In prep.
Project goal: The observed phytoplankton response to mesoscale eddies, measured from satellite altimetry and chlorophyll-a concentration, often lacks consistency. We hypothesize that this is because eddy structures vary spatially and temporally and drive shifts in phytoplankton communities that chlorophyll-a estimates cannot fully capture. Disentangling these processes requires fine-scale tracking of both eddy dynamics and phytoplankton communities. Our objective is to leverage velocities derived from SWOT, observed at scales (O(1 km)) finer than those of previous satellite altimeters, phytoplankton community distributions from PACE, and depth-resolved observations from Argo floats to reveal the impacts of these mechanisms on observed phytoplanktonic ecosystems.