If scientists don’t understand how phytoplankton are getting their energy as primary producers at the base of the food web, it’s hard to make inferences about the interactions of the rest of that global ocean food web—all the way up to humans.
So why has no one included the diel cycle before?
The global ocean is huge, and so are the models that represent it. To grapple with the complexities of what happens in the ocean, modelers often simplify certain processes. Typical models incorporate only seasonal light shifts rather than adding the more fine-grained details of the day/night cycle. This is mostly a computational decision, says Senior Scientist Joe Vallino, senior author on the paper. “If you’re not resolving fine time detail, in general, [the models] run faster.”
“You’re pushing against the hardware constraints,” says Vallino. “You don’t want to have a 10-year simulation take 10 years to simulate.”
But as climate change advances, understanding how the ocean works is vital for understanding how global warming and elevated carbon dioxide affect it.
“This model contributes to advancing our fundamental understanding of how the ocean works,” says Vallino, adding that as scientists make better ocean models, eventually they may use them to investigate possible solutions to climate change while minimizing unintended consequences.
“Being able to predict how the distribution of phytoplankton will change is going to have repercussions higher up the food web,” says Vallino. “If you can’t get that base change right, you can’t get anything that’s connected to that above it.”
This research is part of the , funded by the Simons Foundation.
Citation:
Tsakalakis, I., Follows, M. J., Dutkiewicz, S., Follett, C. L., & Vallino, J. J. (2022). Diel light cycles affect phytoplankton competition in the global ocean. Global Ecology and Biogeography.