Search

The sea surface microlayer (SSML) is critical to air-sea exchanges of gases and primary aerosols. However, despite the extent of this boundary layer, little is known about its specific bacterial community (bacterioneuston) and how it may affect ocean-atmosphere exchanges. Here, we studied the bacterial community composition in the surface waters of three different basins of the Western Mediterranean Sea and assessed the selective air-sea transfer of marine bacteria through experimental nascent sea spray aerosol production in a 10 L tank with plunging jets. In situ, the bacterioneuston harbored basin-specific enriched taxa and followed a similar spatial pattern as the underlying bacterioplankton community. Aerosolization potential showed that sea spray taxa might be recruited from both the underlying water and the SSML, and that taxa enriched in the bacterioneuston were not always aerosolized. Our results suggest that the Mediterranean nutrient gradient, as well as pulse events such as dust deposition, affect the distribution of the bacterial community at the ocean-atmosphere interface, which may impact biogeochemical processes, climate regulation and bacterial dispersal through aerosolization.

Seasonal variations in day length and temperature, in combination with dynamic factors such as advection from the North Atlantic, influence primary production and the microbial loop in the Fram Strait. Here, we investigated the seasonal variability of biopolymers, microbial abundance, and microbial composition within the upper 100 m during summer and fall. Flow cytometry revealed a shift in the autotrophic community from picoeukaryotes dominating in summer to a 34-fold increase of Synechococcus by fall. Furthermore, a significant decline in biopolymers concentrations covaried with increasing microbial diversity based on 16S rRNA gene sequencing along with a community shift towards fewer polymer-degrading genera in fall. The seasonal succession in the biopolymer pool and microbes indicates distinct metabolic regimes, with a higher relative abundance of polysaccharide-degrading genera in summer and a higher relative abundance of common taxa in fall. The parallel analysis of DOM and microbial diversity provides an important baseline for microbe-substrate relationships over the seasonal cycle in the Arctic Ocean.

Although atmospheric dust fluxes from arid as well as human-impacted areas represent a significant source of nutrients to surface waters of the Mediterranean Sea, studies focusing on the evolution of the metabolic balance of the plankton community following a dust deposition event are scarce, and none were conducted in the context of projected future levels of temperature and pH. Moreover, most of the experiments took place in coastal areas. In the framework of the PEACETIME project, three dust-addition perturbation experiments were conducted in 300 L tanks filled with surface seawater collected in the Tyrrhenian Sea (TYR), Ionian Sea (ION) and Algerian basin (FAST) on board the R/V Pourquoi Pas? in late spring 2017. For each experiment, six tanks were used to follow the evolution of chemical and biological stocks, biological activity and particle export. The impacts of a dust deposition event simulated at their surface were followed under present environmental conditions and under a realistic climate change scenario for 2100 (ca. +3 ∘C and −0.3 pH units). The tested waters were all typical of stratified oligotrophic conditions encountered in the open Mediterranean Sea at this period of the year, with low rates of primary production and a metabolic balance towards net heterotrophy. The release of nutrients after dust seeding had very contrasting impacts on the metabolism of the communities, depending on the station investigated. At TYR, the release of new nutrients was followed by a negative impact on both particulate and dissolved 14C-based production rates, while heterotrophic bacterial production strongly increased, driving the community to an even more heterotrophic state. At ION and FAST, the efficiency of organic matter export due to mineral/organic aggregation processes was lower than at TYR and likely related to a lower quantity/age of dissolved organic matter present at the time of the seeding and a smaller production of DOM following dust addition. This was also reflected by lower initial concentrations in transparent exopolymer particles (TEPs) and a lower increase in TEP concentrations following the dust addition, as compared to TYR. At ION and FAST, both the autotrophic and heterotrophic community benefited from dust addition, with a stronger relative increase in autotrophic processes observed at FAST. Our study showed that the potential positive impact of dust deposition on primary production depends on the initial composition and metabolic state of the investigated community. This impact is constrained by the quantity of nutrients added in order to sustain both the fast response of heterotrophic prokaryotes and the delayed one of primary producers. Finally, under future environmental conditions, heterotrophic metabolism was overall more impacted than primary production, with the consequence that all integrated net community production rates decreased with no detectable impact on carbon export, therefore reducing the capacity of surface waters to sequester anthropogenic CO2.

Ice-nucleating particles (INPs) have a large impact on the climate-relevant properties of clouds over the oceans. Studies have shown that sea spray aerosols (SSAs), produced upon bursting of bubbles at the ocean surface, can be an important source of marine INPs, particularly during periods of enhanced biological productivity. Recent mesocosm experiments using natural seawater spiked with nutrients have revealed that marine INPs are derived from two separate classes of organic matter in SSAs. Despite this finding, existing parameterizations for marine INP abundance are based solely on single variables such as SSA organic carbon (OC) or SSA surface area, which may mask specific trends in the separate classes of INP. The goal of this paper is to improve the understanding of the connection between ocean biology and marine INP abundance by reporting results from a field study and proposing a new parameterization of marine INPs that accounts for the two associated classes of organic matter. The PEACETIME cruise took place from 10 May to 10 June 2017 in the Mediterranean Sea. Throughout the cruise, INP concentrations in the surface microlayer r (INPSML) and in SSAs (INPSSA) produced using a plunging aquarium apparatus were continuously monitored while surface seawater (SSW) and SML biological properties were measured in parallel. The organic content of artificially generated SSAs was also evaluated. INPSML concentrations were found to be lower than those reported in the literature, presumably due to the oligotrophic nature of the Mediter ranean Sea. A dust wet deposition event that occurred during the cruise increased the INP concentrations measured in the SML by an order of magnitude, in line with increases in iron in the SML and bacterial abundances. Increases in INPSSA were not observed until after a delay of 3 days compared to increases in the SML and are likely a result of a strong in fluence of bulk SSW INPs for the temperatures investigated (T =-18 °C for SSAs, T =-15 °C for SSW). Results con firmed that INPSSA are divided into two classes depending on their associated organic matter. Here we find that warm (T ≥-22 °C) INPSSA concentrations are correlated with water soluble organic matter (WSOC) in the SSAs, but also with SSW parameters (particulate organic carbon, POCSSW and INPSSW,-16C) while cold INPSSA (T, CHARMEX and MERMEX are supported by CNRS-INSU, IFREMER, CEA, and Météo-France as part of the programme MISTRALS coordinated by INSU. The Sea2Cloud project is funded by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (Sea2Cloud grant agreement no. 771369). Emmanuel Boss's group is funded by NASA Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry.

MILAN was a multidisciplinary, international study examining how the diel variability of sea-surface microlayer biogeochemical properties potentially impacts ocean-atmosphere interaction, in order to improve our understanding of this globally important process. The sea-surface microlayer (SML) at the air-sea interface is < 1 mm deep but it is physically, chemically and biologically distinct from the underlying water and the atmosphere above. Wind-driven turbulence and solar radiation are important drivers of SML physical and biogeochemical properties. Given that the SML is involved in all ocean-atmosphere exchanges of mass and energy, its response to solar radiation, especially in relation to how it regulates the air-sea exchange of climate-relevant gases and aerosols, is surprisingly poorly characterised. MILAN (sea-surface MIcroLAyer at Night) was an international, multidisciplinary campaign designed to specifically address this issue. In spring 2017, we deployed diverse sampling platforms (research vessels, radio-controlled catamaran, free-drifting buoy) to study full diel cycles in the coastal North Sea SML and in underlying water, and installed a land-based aerosol sampler. We also carried out concurrent ex situ experiments using several microsensors, a laboratory gas exchange tank, a solar simulator, and a sea spray simulation chamber. In this paper we outline the diversity of approaches employed and some initial results obtained during MILAN. Our observations of diel SML variability, e.g. the influence of changing solar radiation on the quantity and quality of organic material, and diel changes in wind intensity primarily forcing air-sea CO2 exchange, underline the value and the need of multidisciplinary campaigns for integrating SML complexity into the context of air-sea interaction.

Transparent exopolymer particles (TEP) are polysaccharide-rich microgels that are prevalent in the marine environment and have important roles in the aggregation of organic matter and carbon export from the euphotic zone. TEP are readily colonized by bacteria and utilized by specialized taxa, such as Alteromonadaceae. However, bacterial community composition specifically attached to natural TEP remains largely unknown. In this study, we isolated individual TEP from Plymouth Sound (UK) and performed DNA sequencing of the TEP-attached bacterial communities. We also sampled the cognate bulk seawater total bacterial communities for comparison. The bacterial communities associated with individual TEP showed distinct differences compared to the total bulk bacterioplankton communities, with Alteromonadaceae significantly more abundant on TEP. The TEP-associated Alteromonadaceae consisted of two operational taxonomic units that were closely related to Marinobacter and Glaciecola, both previously associated with biogenic aggregates and microgel-rich habitats. This study provides novel insight into marine bacterial–microgel interactions.

The Sea Surface Microlayer (SML) is known to be enriched by trace metals relative to the underlying water and harbor diverse microbial communities (i.e., neuston). However, the processes linking metals and biota in the SML are not yet fully understood. The metal (Cd, Co, Cu, Fe, Ni, Mo, V, Zn and Pb) concentrations in aerosol samples in the SML (dissolved and total fractions) and in subsurface waters (SSWs; dissolved fraction at ∼1 m depth) from the western Mediterranean Sea were analyzed in this study during a cruise in May–June 2017. The composition and abundance of the bacterial community in the SML and SSW, the primary production, and Chl a in the SSW were measured simultaneously at all stations during the cruise. Residence times in the SML of metals derived from aerosol depositions were highly variable and ranged from minutes for Fe (3.6±6.0 min) to a few hours for Cu (5.8±6.2 h). Concentrations of most of the dissolved metals in both the SML and SSW were positively correlated with the salinity gradient and showed the characteristic eastward increase in the surface waters of the Mediterranean Sea (MS). In contrast, the total fraction of some reactive metals in the SML (i.e., Cu, Fe, Pb and Zn) showed a negative correlation with salinity and a positive correlation with microbial abundance, which might be associated with microbial uptake. Our results show a strong negative correlation between the dissolved and total Ni concentration and heterotrophic bacterial abundance in the SML and SSW, but we cannot ascertain whether this correlation reflects a toxicity effect or is the result of some other process., This research has been supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation, and Universities (grant no. CTM2014-59244-C3-3-R), the Spanish grant “Juan de la Cierva Formación 2015” (grant no. JCI-2015-26873) and “Juan de la Cierva Incorporación 2019” (grant no. IJC2018-037545-I), and the European Commission's Seventh Framework Programme (IRON-IC, grant no. 626734).

Parameterizations of surface ocean isoprene concentrations are numerous, despite the lack of source/sink process understanding. Here we present isoprene and related field measurements in the mixed layer from the Indian Ocean and the eastern Pacific Ocean to investigate the production and consumption rates in two contrasting regions, namely oligotrophic open ocean and the coastal upwelling region. Our data show that the ability of different phytoplankton functional types (PFTs) to produce isoprene seems to be mainly influenced by light, ocean temperature, and salinity. Our field measurements also demonstrate that nutrient availability seems to have a direct influence on the isoprene production. With the help of pigment data, we calculate in-field isoprene production rates for different PFTs under varying biogeochemical and physical conditions. Using these new calculated production rates, we demonstrate that an additional significant and variable loss, besides a known chemical loss and a loss due to air–sea gas exchange, is needed to explain the measured isoprene concentration. We hypothesize that this loss, with a lifetime for isoprene between 10 and 100 days depending on the ocean region, is potentially due to degradation or consumption by bacteria.

Despite the huge extent of the ocean's surface, until now relatively little attention has been paid to the sea surface microlayer (SML) as the ultimate interface where heat, momentum and mass exchange between the ocean and the atmosphere takes place. Via the SML, large-scale environmental changes in the ocean such as warming, acidification, deoxygenation, and eutrophication potentially influence cloud formation, precipitation, and the global radiation balance. Due to the deep connectivity between biological, chemical, and physical processes, studies of the SML may reveal multiple sensitivities to global and regional changes. Understanding the processes at the ocean's surface, in particular involving the SML as an important and determinant interface, could therefore provide an essential contribution to the reduction of uncertainties regarding ocean-climate feedbacks. This review identifies gaps in our current knowledge of the SML and highlights a need to develop a holistic and mechanistic understanding of the diverse biological, chemical, and physical processes occurring at the ocean-atmosphere interface. We advocate the development of strong interdisciplinary expertise and collaboration in order to bridge between ocean and atmospheric sciences. Although this will pose significant methodological challenges, such an initiative would represent a new role model for interdisciplinary research in Earth System sciences.

One pathway by which the oceans influence climate is via the emission of sea spray that may subsequently influence cloud properties. Sea spray emissions are known to be dependent on atmospheric and oceanic physicochemical parameters, but the potential role of ocean biology on sea spray fluxes remains poorly characterized. Here we show a consistent significant relationship between seawater nanophytoplankton cell abundances and sea-spray derived Cloud Condensation Nuclei (CCN) number fluxes, generated using water from three different oceanic regions. This sensitivity of CCN number fluxes to ocean biology is currently unaccounted for in climate models yet our measurements indicate that it influences fluxes by more than one order of magnitude over the range of phytoplankton investigated.