Ocean Deoxygenation Conference | Kiel 2018

The Peruvian upwelling area is known as an area of high N2O emissions. While oxygen-free waters of the OMZ core are depleted in N2O, extremely high production is triggered within the sharp gradients of the oxycline in the coastal waters off Peru, and mixing and upwelling processes can effectively transport these waters with extreme N2O supersaturations towards the surface. This turns the Peruvian upwelling into the most important ocean area for N2O emissions which accounts for about 25% of the global oceanic N2O emissions alone.

Here we investigate the effect of mixing between oxygenated surface waters with waters from the OMZ core on N2O production in a series of incubation experiments with different mixing conditions using GC-ECD and 15N tracer incubations. N2O production was triggered when water from the OMZ was mixed with oxygenated surface waters.