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<front>
<journal-meta>
<journal-id journal-id-type="publisher">EGUsphere</journal-id>
<journal-title-group>
<journal-title>EGUsphere</journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="publisher">EGUsphere</abbrev-journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="nlm-ta">EGUsphere</abbrev-journal-title>
</journal-title-group>
<issn pub-type="epub"></issn>
<publisher><publisher-name>Copernicus Publications</publisher-name>
<publisher-loc>Göttingen, Germany</publisher-loc>
</publisher>
</journal-meta>
<article-meta>
<article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.5194/egusphere-2026-2729</article-id>
<title-group>
<article-title>Tidal modulation of nitrate supply and chlorophyll-a in the Amazon shelf&amp;ndash;offshore continuum</article-title>
</title-group>
<contrib-group><contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>M'hamdi</surname>
<given-names>Amine</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0009-0008-2296-5539</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff3">
<sup>3</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Koch-Larrouy</surname>
<given-names>Ariane</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Dadou</surname>
<given-names>Isabelle</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>de Macedo</surname>
<given-names>Carina Regina</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6732-9554</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff4">
<sup>4</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff7">
<sup>7</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Assene</surname>
<given-names>Fernand</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff5">
<sup>5</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff6">
<sup>6</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Vantrepotte</surname>
<given-names>Vincent</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff7">
<sup>7</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Morvan</surname>
<given-names>Guillaume</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Costa da Silva</surname>
<given-names>Alex</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff3">
<sup>3</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
</contrib-group><aff id="aff1">
<label>1</label>
<addr-line>CECI CNRS/Cerfacs/IRD, Université de Toulouse, Toulouse, France</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff2">
<label>2</label>
<addr-line>LEGOS, Université de Toulouse, CNRS, OMP, IRD, Toulouse, France</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff3">
<label>3</label>
<addr-line>Departamento de Oceanografia, Universidade Federal de Pernambuco (DOCEAN/UFPE), Recife, Brazil</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff4">
<label>4</label>
<addr-line>Earth Observation and Geoinformatics Division, National Institute for Space Research (INPE), São José dos Campos, Brazil</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff5">
<label>5</label>
<addr-line>Mercator Ocean International, 31400 Toulouse, France</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff6">
<label>6</label>
<addr-line>Department of Maritime Navigation and Information Systems, National Advanced School of Maritime and Ocean Science and Technology (NASMOST), University of Ebolowa, P.O. Box: 292 Kribi, Cameroon</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff7">
<label>7</label>
<addr-line>Univ. Littoral Côte d’Opale, CNRS, Univ. Lille, IRD, UMR 8187- LOG- Laboratoire d’Océanologie et de Géosciences, 62930 Wimereux, France</addr-line>
</aff>
<pub-date pub-type="epub">
<day>27</day>
<month>05</month>
<year>2026</year>
</pub-date>
<volume>2026</volume>
<fpage>1</fpage>
<lpage>43</lpage>
<permissions>
<copyright-statement>Copyright: &#x000a9; 2026 Amine M'hamdi et al.</copyright-statement>
<copyright-year>2026</copyright-year>
<license license-type="open-access">
<license-p>This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this licence, visit <ext-link ext-link-type="uri"  xlink:href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/</ext-link></license-p>
</license>
</permissions>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-2729/">This article is available from https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-2729/</self-uri>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-2729/egusphere-2026-2729.pdf">The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-2729/egusphere-2026-2729.pdf</self-uri>
<abstract>
<p>The Amazon shelf&amp;ndash;offshore continuum is a dynamic biogeochemical hotspot of the tropical Atlantic, where river&lt;br /&gt;discharge, ocean circulation, and strong tides interact to shape nutrient and phytoplankton distributions. The Amazon plume&lt;br /&gt;and regional circulation have been widely studied and are known to strongly influence nutrient availability and biological&lt;br /&gt;productivity in this region. However, shelf-break tides remain an overlooked pathway linking physical energy to offshore&amp;nbsp;fertilization, and their contribution to seasonal and intraseasonal biogeochemical variability remains unclear. Here, we&lt;br /&gt;quantify how tidal dynamics, including internal tides, modulate nitrate supply and chlorophyll distributions from the&lt;br /&gt;Amazon shelf to offshore waters. We use a high-resolution coupled physical&amp;ndash;biogeochemical model (1/36&amp;deg;), evaluated&lt;br /&gt;against climatological, satellite, and in situ observations. The model reproduces the main observed patterns of surface nitrate&lt;br /&gt;and chlorophyll, as well as key vertical features such as the nitracline and the deep chlorophyll maximum. We show that&amp;nbsp;tides strongly enhance upward nitrate transport, increasing surface nitrate by more than 50% over the northern shelf, along&lt;br /&gt;the shelf break, and within the main internal-tide pathway. This tidally supplied nitrate fuels offshore phytoplankton growth,&lt;br /&gt;increasing chlorophyll by about 15&amp;ndash;50%, while reducing surface chlorophyll near the Amazon mouth by 30&amp;ndash;&lt;br /&gt;40%.Seasonally, surface chlorophyll and nitrate are higher over the Amazon shelf during April&amp;ndash;June but lower offshore,&lt;br /&gt;revealing a marked cross-shelf contrast. When the tidal contribution is isolated, a similar but weaker spatial structure&lt;br /&gt;30 emerges, with a cone-shaped chlorophyll anomaly extending from the shelf break toward the offshore internal-tide&lt;br /&gt;propagation region. Remarkably, tides account for about 63% of the total seasonal variability in surface nitrate, meaning that&lt;br /&gt;tidal forcing alone explains more than half of the seasonal nutrient signal. At intraseasonal timescales, tides generate a clear&lt;br /&gt;spring&amp;ndash;neap rhythm of about 15 days in both nitrate and chlorophyll. This spring&amp;ndash;neap tidal pulse propagates from the shelf&lt;br /&gt;break toward offshore waters and is especially pronounced near the deep chlorophyll maximum, where oscillations of the&lt;br /&gt;upper nitracline periodically modulate nitrate availability and drive a corresponding chlorophyll response., where&lt;br /&gt;chlorophyll variability is nearly doubled when tides are included. The concurrent increase in nitrate variability indicates that&lt;br /&gt;this spring&amp;ndash;neap phytoplankton response is sustained by tidally driven nutrient supply.&lt;br /&gt;These findings identify internal tides as a key biogeochemical driver of the Amazon shelf&amp;ndash;offshore continuum, linking tidal&lt;br /&gt;energy to nutrient injection, offshore fertilization, seasonal redistribution, and rhythmic ecosystem variability in the western&lt;br /&gt;tropical Atlantic.</p>
</abstract>
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<funding-group>
<award-group id="gs1">
<funding-source>Fundação de Amparo à Ciência e Tecnologia do Estado de Pernambuco</funding-source>
<award-id>(IBPG-1078- 1.08/22</award-id>
</award-group>
</funding-group>
</article-meta>
</front>
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