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EcoGEnIE 1.0: plankton ecology in the cGEnIE Earth system model

EcoGEnIE 1.0: plankton ecology in the cGEnIE Earth system model
EcoGEnIE 1.0: plankton ecology in the cGEnIE Earth system model
We present an extension to the carbon-centric Grid Enabled Integrated Earth system model (cGEnIE) that explicitly accounts for the growth and interaction of an arbitrary number of plankton species. The new package (ECOGEM) replaces the implicit, flux-based parameterisation of the plankton community currently employed, with explicitly resolved plankton populations and ecological dynamics. In ECOGEM, any number of plankton species, with ecophysiological traits (e.g. growth and grazing rates) assigned according to organism size and functional group (e.g. phytoplankton and zooplankton) can be incorporated at runtime. We illustrate the capability of the marine ecology enabled Earth system model (EcoGEnIE) by comparing results from one configuration of ECOGEM (with eight generic phytoplankton and zooplankton size classes) to climatological and seasonal observations. We find that the new ecological components of the model show reasonable agreement with both global-scale climatological and local-scale seasonal data. We also compare EcoGEnIE results to the existing biogeochemical incarnation of cGEnIE. We find that the resulting global-scale distributions of phosphate, iron, dissolved inorganic carbon, alkalinity, and oxygen are similar for both iterations of the model. A slight deterioration in some fields in EcoGEnIE (relative to the data) is observed, although we make no attempt to re-tune the overall marine cycling of carbon and nutrients here. The increased capabilities of EcoGEnIE in this regard will enable future exploration of the ecological community on much longer timescales than have previously been examined in global ocean ecosystem models and particularly for past climates and global biogeochemical cycles.
1991-9603
4241-4267
Ward, Ben
9063af30-e344-4626-9470-8db7c1543d05
Wilson, Jamie
66a55e29-7bad-47cf-a7f9-d24ceb8d9f28
Death, Ros
3d42054b-616c-4c3b-bede-cef98c9bbe10
Monteiro, F.M.
28d4414d-5748-4072-ac11-31fd4fae0b55
Yool, Andrew
882aeb0d-dda0-405e-844c-65b68cce5017
Ridgwell, Andy
769cea5c-e033-456a-8b53-51dfa307dc35
Ward, Ben
9063af30-e344-4626-9470-8db7c1543d05
Wilson, Jamie
66a55e29-7bad-47cf-a7f9-d24ceb8d9f28
Death, Ros
3d42054b-616c-4c3b-bede-cef98c9bbe10
Monteiro, F.M.
28d4414d-5748-4072-ac11-31fd4fae0b55
Yool, Andrew
882aeb0d-dda0-405e-844c-65b68cce5017
Ridgwell, Andy
769cea5c-e033-456a-8b53-51dfa307dc35

Ward, Ben, Wilson, Jamie, Death, Ros, Monteiro, F.M., Yool, Andrew and Ridgwell, Andy (2018) EcoGEnIE 1.0: plankton ecology in the cGEnIE Earth system model. Geoscientific Model Development, 11 (10), 4241-4267. (doi:10.5194/gmd-11-4241-2018).

Record type: Article

Abstract

We present an extension to the carbon-centric Grid Enabled Integrated Earth system model (cGEnIE) that explicitly accounts for the growth and interaction of an arbitrary number of plankton species. The new package (ECOGEM) replaces the implicit, flux-based parameterisation of the plankton community currently employed, with explicitly resolved plankton populations and ecological dynamics. In ECOGEM, any number of plankton species, with ecophysiological traits (e.g. growth and grazing rates) assigned according to organism size and functional group (e.g. phytoplankton and zooplankton) can be incorporated at runtime. We illustrate the capability of the marine ecology enabled Earth system model (EcoGEnIE) by comparing results from one configuration of ECOGEM (with eight generic phytoplankton and zooplankton size classes) to climatological and seasonal observations. We find that the new ecological components of the model show reasonable agreement with both global-scale climatological and local-scale seasonal data. We also compare EcoGEnIE results to the existing biogeochemical incarnation of cGEnIE. We find that the resulting global-scale distributions of phosphate, iron, dissolved inorganic carbon, alkalinity, and oxygen are similar for both iterations of the model. A slight deterioration in some fields in EcoGEnIE (relative to the data) is observed, although we make no attempt to re-tune the overall marine cycling of carbon and nutrients here. The increased capabilities of EcoGEnIE in this regard will enable future exploration of the ecological community on much longer timescales than have previously been examined in global ocean ecosystem models and particularly for past climates and global biogeochemical cycles.

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Accepted/In Press date: 28 August 2018
e-pub ahead of print date: 18 October 2018
Published date: 18 October 2018

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 425436
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/425436
ISSN: 1991-9603
PURE UUID: 0a5e7e37-75af-48c0-85a1-5a240cc100db

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Date deposited: 19 Oct 2018 16:30
Last modified: 15 Mar 2024 22:13

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Contributors

Author: Ben Ward
Author: Jamie Wilson
Author: Ros Death
Author: F.M. Monteiro
Author: Andrew Yool
Author: Andy Ridgwell

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