A stochastic, Lagrangian model of sinking biogenic aggregates in the ocean (SLAMS 1.0): model formulation, validation and sensitivity

Jokulsdottir, Tinna; Archer, David

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-9-1455-2016

Articles | Volume 9, issue 4

https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-9-1455-2016

© Author(s) 2016. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-9-1455-2016

© Author(s) 2016. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Articles | Volume 9, issue 4

Model description paper

|

19 Apr 2016

Model description paper |

| 19 Apr 2016

A stochastic, Lagrangian model of sinking biogenic aggregates in the ocean (SLAMS 1.0): model formulation, validation and sensitivity

Tinna Jokulsdottir and David Archer

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Final revised paper (published on 19 Apr 2016)
Preprint (discussion started on 28 Jul 2015)
Supplement to the preprint

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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- Supplement

SC C1693: 'General Comments on gmd-2015-99 describing SLAMS 1.0', Jamie Wilson, 12 Aug 2015
RC C1740: 'Review of Jokulsdottir and Archer', George Jackson, 20 Aug 2015
RC C1862: 'Referee comment', Anonymous Referee #2, 02 Sep 2015
AC C3564: 'Author comment', Tinna Jokulsdottir, 06 Jan 2016

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

AR by Tinna Jokulsdottir on behalf of the Authors (06 Jan 2016) Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (07 Jan 2016) by Guy Munhoven

RR by George Jackson (28 Jan 2016)

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (29 Jan 2016)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

I think the presentation of the model and its results has become more readable, and I particularly like the concise presentation of the sensitivity experiments (although some introductory comments might help the reader to understand right from the start how these have been carried out). I have some few comments, however, that may improve the model description, and make the model setup more easily accessible:

- A table of default parameters, against which the sensitivity experiments have been carried out would be nice

- Section three: a few general comments about the setup of the sensitivity experiment (e.g., the scaling factor approach) would be nice

Minor comments:

p 2, lines 132: explain BI earlier

p 2, line 140: "understanding"

p 2, lines 131-134: this rather seems to belong to the Model Description section

p 3, line 175: "its"

p 3, line 194: "ensemble"?

p 3, line 267: "1 new aggregate" - aggregate, or aggregate class?

p 4, line 346: do you rather mean: "such that n_j>=n_i"?

p 5, line 444: "i .... " - i is an integer; what exactly is sum of orgC - also an integer?

p 6, line 551: "aggregates"

p 7, line 566: "zooplankton"

p 7, line 586 "it is fragmented" - do you rather mean "will be fragmented"?

p 8, eqn. 42: really 10^16?

p 9, line 760: "There, ..." - do you mean "In this experiment"?

p 9, line 764: "figure 4c and d" - I could not find these figures.

p 9, lines 781-785: Why does the slope become more negative when stickiness is increased? This sounds rather counter-intuitive to me.

p 19, Figure caption 6: "bin". Also, explain more clearly what the symbols are - at first I thought, these were observations. Why take output from 10 depth bins?

p 11, line 978: "predict" - I wonder whether at this stage we can really expect to "predict" direction and magnitude of the biological carbon pump; so far, the model depends on many assumptions, which are not well constrained by observations (as also stated earlier in the paper). I would therefore suggest to use more cautious wording.

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ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (Editor review) (03 Feb 2016) by Guy Munhoven

AR by Tinna Jokulsdottir on behalf of the Authors (19 Feb 2016) Manuscript

ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (Editor review) (26 Feb 2016) by Guy Munhoven

AR by Tinna Jokulsdottir on behalf of the Authors (08 Mar 2016)

ED: Publish as is (15 Mar 2016) by Guy Munhoven

AR by Tinna Jokulsdottir on behalf of the Authors (18 Mar 2016)

Short summary

To better understand what controls the flux of organic and inorganic material down the water column we developed a numerical model that simulates coagulation, settling and bio-chemical transformation of particles in the ocean. To simulate the many types of material the particles constitute, we took a Lagrangian approach. Our results suggest the flux is most sensitive to environmental change in polar regions. We found that zooplankton are the biggest unknown when predicting the flux.