Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

About: Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution is a nonprofit organization based out in Falmouth, Massachusetts, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Mantle (geology). The organization has 5685 authors who have published 18396 publications receiving 1202050 citations. The organization is also known as: WHOI.

Sediment trap experiments in the deep north Atlantic: isotopic and elemental fluxes

Abstract: Sediment trap experiments have been carried out at sites in the Sargasso Sea (S/sub 2/) and in the Atlantic off Barbados (E) to determine the mass flux and chemical composition of material sinking to the sea floor. At the S/sub 2/ site, the mass flux increases with depth, at the E site the flux is constant. Chemical analyses show that K, Ti, Al, La, V, Co and /sup 232/Th are derived largely from terrigenous materials whereas Ca, Sr, Mg, Si, Ba, /sup 220/Ra, U and I are carried by biogenic particles. The reactive elements Mn, Cu, Fe, Sc, and /sup 230/ /sup 234/Th, show increasing ratios to Al with depth due to scavenging from the water column. A mean particle settling velocity of 21 m day/sup -1/ and scavenging residence times ranging from 22 years for Th to 500 years for Cu have been calculated. The flux of aluminosilicates increases with depth, and this cannot be attributed to changes in trap efficiency. Thus horizontal transport of material must be invoked.

Rapid early Holocene deglaciation of the Laurentide ice sheet

Abstract: The demise of the Laurentide ice sheet during the early Holocene epoch is the most recent and best constrained disappearance of a large ice sheet in the Northern Hemisphere, and thus allows an assessment of rates of ice-sheet decay as well as attendant contributions to sea level rise. Here, we use terrestrial and marine records of the deglaciation to identify two periods of rapid melting during the final demise of the Laurentide ice sheet, when melting ice contributed about 1.3 and 0.7cm of sea level rise per year, respectively. Our simulations with a fully coupled ocean‐atmosphere model suggest that increased ablation due to enhanced early Holocene boreal summer insolation was the predominant cause of Laurentide ice-sheet retreat. Although the surface radiative forcing in boreal summer during the early Holocene is twice as large as the greenhouse-gas forcing expected by the year 2100, the associated increase in summer surface air temperatures is very similar. We conclude that our geologic evidence for a rapid retreat of the Laurentide ice sheet may therefore describe a prehistoric precedent for mass balance changes of the Greenland ice sheet over the coming century.

Benthic nutrient regeneration and its coupling to primary productivity in coastal waters

Abstract: SHALLOW near-shore ocean waters support high primary production because of the availability of inorganic nutrients. The availability is usually attributed to the proximity of fresh-water runoff or to coastal upwelling and deep water advection1,2.