Evaluation of asymmetric Oxygen Minimum Zones in the tropical Pacific: a basin-scale OGCM-DMEC V1.0

Abstract. The tropical Pacific Ocean holds the world’s two largest Oxygen Minimum Zones (OMZs), showing a prominent hemispheric asymmetry, with a much stronger and broader OMZ north of the equator. However, there is a lack of quantitative assessments of physical and biological regulations on the asymmetry of tropical Pacific OMZs. Here, we apply a fully coupled basin-scale model (OGCM-DMEC V1.0) to investigate the impacts of physical supply and biological consumption on the dynamics of OMZs in the tropical Pacific. We first utilize observational data to evaluate and improve our model simulation, and find that mid-depth DO is more sensitive to the parameterization of background diffusion. Enhanced background diffusion results in higher DO concentrations at mid-depth, leading to significant improvement of our model capability to reproduce the asymmetric OMZs. Our study shows that while physical supply of DO is increased in majority of the tropical Pacific due to enhanced background diffusion, there is little increase in the largest OMZ to the north. Interestingly, enhanced background diffusion results in lower rates of biological consumption over ~ 300–1000 m in the entire basin, which is associated with redistribution of dissolved organic matter (DOM). Our analyses demonstrate that weaker physical supply in the ETNP is the dominant process responsible for the asymmetric DO in the core OMZs (~ 200–600 m) while higher biological consumption to the north plays a larger role in regulating DO concentration beneath the OMZs (~ 600–800 m), with implication for the asymmetric OMZs. This study highlights the roles of physical supply and biological consumption in shaping the asymmetric OMZs in the tropical Pacific, underscoring the need to understand both physical and biological processes for accurate projections of DO variability.