Atmospheric iron supply and marine productivity in the glacial North Pacific Ocean

Burgay, François; Spolaor, Andrea; Gabrieli, Jacopo; Cozzi, Giulio; Turetta, Clara; Vallelonga, Paul; Barbante, Carlo

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-17-491-2021

Articles | Volume 17, issue 1

https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-17-491-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-17-491-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 17, issue 1

Research article

|

23 Feb 2021

Research article |

| 23 Feb 2021

Atmospheric iron supply and marine productivity in the glacial North Pacific Ocean

François Burgay, Andrea Spolaor, Jacopo Gabrieli, Giulio Cozzi, Clara Turetta, Paul Vallelonga, and Carlo Barbante

Download

Final revised paper (published on 23 Feb 2021)
Preprint (discussion started on 10 Jul 2020)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

- Printer-friendly version

- Supplement

RC1: 'cp-2020-77', Anonymous Referee #1, 20 Aug 2020
- AC1: 'Reply to Reviewer#1', Andrea Spolaor, 27 Nov 2020
RC2: 'Reviewer comments for cp-2020-77', Anonymous Referee #2, 02 Sep 2020
- AC2: 'Reply to Reviewer #2', Andrea Spolaor, 27 Nov 2020
RC3: 'Review of Burgay et al. "Atmospheric Fe supply has a negligible role in promoting marine productivity in the Glacial North Pacific Ocean"', Anonymous Referee #3, 24 Sep 2020
- AC3: 'Reply to Reviewer#3', Andrea Spolaor, 27 Nov 2020

Peer-review completion

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

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (03 Dec 2020) by Alberto Reyes

AR by Andrea Spolaor on behalf of the Authors (03 Dec 2020) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (15 Dec 2020) by Alberto Reyes

RR by Anonymous Referee #3 (09 Jan 2021)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

“Atmospheric Fe supply has a negligible role in promoting marine productivity in the Glacial North Pacific Ocean” by Francois Burgay et al.

This is a revised manuscript which I believe has adequately addressed the points raised by previous reviewers. The manuscript should be carefully read to ensure that there are no grammatical mistakes, a few are listed below.

The questions regarding stronger water stratification during the Last Glacial Period are addressed clearly in the revised manuscript, with more explanation for how the authors came to this conclusion for the readers.

Authors added more information regarding the leaching procedure that was used to determine the labile portion of Fe, including acidifying samples for 1 month with 2% nitric acid, consistent with Koffman et al., 2014. They also highlight the importance for maintaining the same procedure for other ice core trace elemental studies for adequate comparison which I fully agree with.

Minor comments

Suggest changing title of section 2.1 to: “Sampling and processing”

Line 133: don’t start sentence with the abbreviated name

Line 134: replace “stays for seawater” with “indicates seawater”.

Line 139: replace “ans” with “and”

Line 140-141: replace “whose values are from” with “previously determined by…”

Line 213: Add “During” at beginning of sentence

Line 231: replace “scopes” with “scope”

Line 245: replace “consistently” with “consistent”

Line 277: remove the “…”

Line 279: “Strontium and lead isotopes indicate that Saharan dust contributed to the overall NEEM dust budget primarily during…”

Line 282-285: rewrite this sentence, its confusing as written now

Hide

ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (13 Jan 2021) by Alberto Reyes

AR by Andrea Spolaor on behalf of the Authors (13 Jan 2021) Author's response Author's tracked changes Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (14 Jan 2021) by Alberto Reyes

AR by Andrea Spolaor on behalf of the Authors (18 Jan 2021) Manuscript

Short summary

We present the first Fe record from the NEEM ice core, which provides insight into past atmospheric Fe deposition in the Arctic. Considering the biological relevance of Fe, we questioned if the increased eolian Fe supply during glacial periods could explain the marine productivity variability in the Fe-limited subarctic Pacific Ocean. We found no overwhelming evidence that eolian Fe fertilization triggered any phytoplankton blooms, likely because other factors play a more relevant role.