Overview of REOPTIMIZE final results (2 papers in peer-reviewed journals):
Part 1. The optical scattering as a proxy of marine particle size
No significant relationships between particle size distributions and optical scattering proxies were found across the oligotrophic Atlantic Ocean, from the surface down to 500 m depth. The slopes of the particle size distributions were lower than expected from previous bio-optical models based on the spectral beam attenuation coefficient (i.e. total scattering). Optical proxies based on the backscattering coefficient, could only match the average value of the slope of PSDs as predicted from previously published models, though with high uncertainty. The lack of significant relationships between the slopes of PSDs and backscattering, observed here for the first time in open-ocean oligotrophic waters, confirmed findings of growing literature for other regions of the global ocean. In stark contrast with earlier studies, the spectral backscattering properties of marine particles analysed in our study were not related to co-located particle size distributions. This is because a single slope of the PSDs cannot describe the huge variability of marine particle sizes and concentrations in the open ocean.
Part 2. The marine particles seen by optical scattering measurements
The observations of the particulate optical backscattering coefficient are critically limited by an incomplete mechanistic understanding of what particles generate the backscattering signal. To achieve this understanding, optical models must be employed. The simplest of these models – the homogeneous sphere (i.e. Mie theory) – severely underestimates the particulate backscattering in the open ocean, and the missing signal has been attributed to submicron particles. This long-standing issue is known as the “missing” backscattering enigma.
In REOPTIMIZE, we developed a slightly more complex optical model for particles – the coated sphere – that predicted all the measured backscattering across the Atlantic Ocean using realistic parameters. Thus, for the first time, we could provide an interpretation of in-situ oceanic particulate backscattering measurements that was not based on the homogeneous-sphere model. In contrast with previous interpretations based on the homogeneous-sphere model, our theoretical and experimental results suggested that the majority of the particulate backscattering coefficient in the studied area was due to particles with equivalent diameters between 1 and 10 μm, and that submicron particles generated less than 40% of the measured signal. Additional 1-µm size-fractionation experiments independently confirmed these findings. Our results thus demonstrated that the structural complexity of particles is critical to understand open-ocean backscattering, provided a simple solution to the long-standing backscattering enigma, and opened a new direction towards exploiting the full potential of optical backscattering observations for investigating the biological carbon pump.
