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Articles | Volume 22, issue 14
Articles | Volume 22, issue 14
https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-22-3485-2025
© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-22-3485-2025
© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Articles | Volume 22, issue 14
Research article
 | Highlight paper
 | 
18 Jul 2025
Research article | Highlight paper |  | 18 Jul 2025

Marine snow morphology drives sinking and attenuation in the ocean interior

Yawouvi Dodji Soviadan, Miriam Beck, Joelle Habib, Alberto Baudena, Laetitia Drago, Alexandre Accardo, Remi Laxenaire, Sabrina Speich, Peter Brandt, Rainer Kiko, and Stemmann Lars

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Editorial statement
This study is the first to measure marine snow morphologies, sinking speeds, and midwater attenuation in export plumes using a BGC-Argo float equipped with optical and imaging sensors, offering new insights into the effects of morphology on particle sinking. The findings emphasize the need to move beyond size-based models by incorporating morphological properties to improve understanding of particle sinking and enhance flux estimates, with potential applications for monitoring natural and human-induced export events at high spatio-temporal resolution.
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Short summary
Key parameters representing the gravity flux in global models are sinking speed and vertical attenuation of exported material. We calculate, for the first time, these parameters in situ in the ocean for six intermittent blooms followed by export events using high-resolution (3 d) time series of 0–1000 m depth profiles from imaging sensors mounted on an Argo float. We show that sinking speed depends not only on size but also on the morphology of the particles, with density being an important property.
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