The iron (Fe) supply to phytoplankton communities in the Southern Ocean surface exerts a strong control on oceanic carbon storage and global climate. Hydrothermal vents are one potential Fe source to this region, but it is not known whether hydrothermal Fe persists in seawater long enough to reach the surface before it is removed by particle scavenging. A new study (Jenkins, 2020, https://doi.org/10.1029/2020GL087266) fills an important gap in this puzzle: a helium‐3 mass balance model is used to show that it takes ~100 yr for deep hydrothermally influenced waters to upwell to the surface around Antarctica. However, estimates of Fe scavenging time scales range from tens to hundreds of years and must be more narrowly constrained to fully resolve the role of hydrothermal Fe in the ocean's biological pump.

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评论：南洋上升流和海洋铁循环

向南大洋表面浮游植物群落提供的铁（Fe）对海洋碳储存和全球气候具有强有力的控制作用。热液喷口是该区域潜在的铁源，但尚不知道热液铁在海水中是否持续足够长的时间才能到达地表，然后再通过颗粒清除将其清除。一项新研究（Jenkins，2020，https://doi.org/10.1029/2020GL087266）填补了这一难题中的一个重要空白：氦3质量平衡模型用于表明受深水热影响的水大约需要100年的时间上升到南极周围的地表。然而，铁清除时间尺度的估计范围是几十年到数百年，并且必须更严格地限制它以完全解决热液铁在海洋生物泵中的作用。