The Ocean Carbon Cycle and Climate Change: An Analysis of Interconnected Scales

Many studies of patch dynamics develop from provocative observations: hence, the scales of interest are those at which observations were practical. If further work suggests that patchiness at scales outside the range observed may be important, then the observation capabilities may be expanded into these ranges of scales. Recently, oceanographers have taken on a daunting challenge where the choice of scale selection has been removed. The ocean is important to climate change and global warming—as a storer and transporter of heat and carbon—but our understanding of the operative processes is inadequate to make predictions with the required skill. We cannot choose the observational “window” where we are most capable: we must address all scales that contribute to the global climate. In particular, to assess the role of the marine ecosystem in the ocean carbon cycle, we have had initially to extrapolate to ocean basin scales (105 km) from, for example, a few tens of sediment traps (1 m diameter) or water samples (10 cm, based on a 1 L sample). How do we bridge over 9 orders of magnitude to address problems of global scale from water samples typically of 1 L volume?