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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-2026-4347</article-id>
<title-group>
<article-title>Biological imprint dominates global mesoscale air-sea flux anomalies of carbon dioxide and oxygen</article-title>
</title-group>
<contrib-group><contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Hocke</surname>
<given-names>Nana</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0009-0003-1746-5912</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Patara</surname>
<given-names>Lavinia</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4093-3609</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Dunne</surname>
<given-names>John</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>Schütte</surname>
<given-names>Florian</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4846-1434</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</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>Pacheco</surname>
<given-names>Mariana Maia</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0693-4395</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff4">
<sup>4</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Frenger</surname>
<given-names>Ivy</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3490-7239</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
</contrib-group><aff id="aff1">
<label>1</label>
<addr-line>GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel, Kiel, Germany</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff2">
<label>2</label>
<addr-line>National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, Princeton, New Jersey, USA</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff3">
<label>3</label>
<addr-line>Christian-Albrechts-University, Kiel, Germany</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff4">
<label>4</label>
<addr-line>School of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK</addr-line>
</aff>
<pub-date pub-type="epub">
<day>18</day>
<month>08</month>
<year>2026</year>
</pub-date>
<volume>2026</volume>
<fpage>1</fpage>
<lpage>35</lpage>
<permissions>
<copyright-statement>Copyright: &#x000a9; 2026 Nana Hocke 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-2026-4347/">This article is available from https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-4347/</self-uri>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-4347/egusphere-2026-4347.pdf">The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-4347/egusphere-2026-4347.pdf</self-uri>
<abstract>
<p>Ocean mesoscale phenomena (&quot;mesoscale eddies&quot;) are fundamental components in mediating air-sea heat and momentum fluxes through anomalies of sea surface temperatures and currents. Yet, their impacts on air-sea gas fluxes, such as carbon dioxide, CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;, and oxygen, O&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;, through changing solubility and biological cycling, remain underexplored. This study aims to diagnose global patterns of ocean mesoscale CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; and O&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; flux anomalies and their drivers. To this end, we use results from an ocean eddy-rich 0.1&amp;deg; GFDL climate model (CM2.6), namely a preindustrial control simulation and an idealized climate change simulation with a linear increase in atmospheric CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; until CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; doubling is reached. Mesoscale air-sea CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; and O&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; flux anomalies are isolated from large-scale signals by applying spatial filtering to monthly averaged model results.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;We find that globally mesoscale variability explains approximately 6&amp;ndash;7 % of the variance in CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; and O&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; fluxes, with regional contributions exceeding 30 %. We present an analytical framework to attribute air-sea CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; and O&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; flux anomalies to thermally-driven solubility effects versus biological imprints, based on the sign of the correlation between CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; and O&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; flux anomalies.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;We find a clear regional imprint in the mechanisms by which mesoscale eddies influence CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; and O&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; fluxes. In subtropical and mid-latitude regions, CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; and O&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; flux anomalies are predominantly of the same sign, indicating that mesoscale eddies impact gas fluxes mainly through solubility changes. In tropical and high-latitude regions the effect of mesoscale eddies on CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; and O&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; flux is mostly of biological origin, as indicated by an opposite sign of CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; and O&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; flux anomalies, either caused by changes in biological productivity or upwelling of a respiration signal from the ocean interior. Although the regions with a biological imprint globally cover an area comparable to solubility-driven regions globally, the associated flux anomalies are larger in magnitude, causing the biological drivers to dominate the globally integrated absolute mesoscale anomalies, representing approximately two-thirds of the total signal, and account for 7&amp;ndash;9 % to global variance (compared to 5&amp;ndash;7 % for solubility-driven regions). Under CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; doubling, solubility-driven regions expand and fluxes intensify, increasing their relative contribution, though the large-scale patterns of drivers remain the same. The biological contribution remains dominant for O&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;, while the relative importance of solubility-driven processes increases for both gases under warming. Our results highlight the spatial organization of mesoscale-driven air-sea gas fluxes into distinct regimes and demonstrate that, on a global scale, a biological imprint dominates the magnitude of mesoscale CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; and O&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; flux anomalies.</p>
</abstract>
<counts><page-count count="35"/></counts>
<funding-group>
<award-group id="gs1">
<funding-source>European Research Council</funding-source>
<award-id>101118693</award-id>
<award-id>101116545</award-id>
</award-group>
</funding-group>
</article-meta>
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