Interactive comment on “Biological productivity in the Mauritanian upwelling estimated with a triple gas approach” by T. Steinhoff et al
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General Comments The authors present a novel approach for calculating net community production (NCP) in eastern boundary upwelling systems using data from the Mauritanian Upwelling as a case study. Their calculations rely on a triple gas approach (N2O; CO2 and O2), though O2 is primarily used to validate the results derived for CO2. Briefly, N2O is used as a quasi-inert tracer of recently upwelled water to calculate the time since upwelling (). This is used to assign i values to concurrent DIC data. The latter are corrected for sea-air gas exchange over i+1-i and the resulting value is subtracted from the observed DIC for i+1 to derive NCP. The authors show that NCP from three cruises is strongly correlated with the upwelling index (UI) derived from model predictions. This could be a particularly attractive and costeffective way of quantifying NCP under different upwelling conditions. The paper addresses pertinent scientific questions and is within the scope of BG. To my knowledge, this is a novel and, in my opinion, elegant approach, which leads to important findings. The paper is clearly presented with appropriate equations, tables and figures. However, the authors have not discussed or propagated critical uncertainties in their calculations. These uncertainties could have a large impact on the magnitude of NCP and bring the predictive utility of the NCP-UI relationship into question. Nevertheless, I like the concept and would like to see the paper in BG, once the authors have addressed my concerns.
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Interactive comment on “Biological productivity in the Mauritanian upwelling estimated with a triple gas approach” by T. Steinhoff et al
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Interactive comment on “Biological productivity in the Mauritanian upwelling estimated with a triple gas approach” by T. Steinhoff et al
This paper describes a clever way of deriving net community production (NCP) using measured mixed layer concentrations of N2O, O2 and CO2. This seems to me to be a basically sound approach and is appropriate for publication in Biogeosciences. In agreement with the exhaustive comments of a previous anonymous reviewer I believe that the major issues to address are those relating to data and calcu...
متن کاملInteractive comment on “Biological productivity in the Mauritanian upwelling estimated with a triple gas approach” by T. Steinhoff et al
General Comments The authors present a novel approach for calculating net community production (NCP) in eastern boundary upwelling systems using data from the Mauritanian Upwelling as a case study. Their calculations rely on a triple gas approach (N2O; CO2 and O2), though O2 is primarily used to validate the results derived for CO2. Briefly, N2O is used as a quasi-inert tracer of recently upwel...
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