Marine uptake of carbon dioxide reduces the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Continental shelf seas are essential for carbon uptake from the atmosphere, but are also highly variable environments, for which uncertainties of carbon budget estimates are large. Recent studies indicate that their carbon sink capacity is weakening. A way to reduce the uncertainty of carbon budgets is to increase our observational ca...

One key challenge of marine monitoring programs is to reasonably combine information from different in situ observations spread in space and time. In that context, we suggest the use of Lagrangian transport simulations extending both forward and backward in time to identify the movements of water bodies from the time they were observed to the time of their synopsis. We present examples of how synoptic maps of salinity generate...

Backward drift simulations can aid the interpretation of in situ monitoring data. In some cases, however, trajectories are very sensitive to even small changes in the tracer release position. A corresponding spread of backward simulations implies attraction in the forward passage of time and, hence, uncertainty about the probed water body's origin. This study examines surface drift simulations in the German Bight (North Sea)....

We analysed relative dispersion of surface drifters released as pairs (six instances) or triplets (two instances) during three field experiments conducted in the German Bight in close proximity to wind farms. There is some tentative evidence that nearly exponential growth of relative dispersion (non-local dispersion) preferably occurs for drifter pairs that are most exposed to the influence of a wind farm. Kinetic energy spect...

Six surface drifters (drogued at about 1 m depth) deployed in the inner German Bight (North Sea) were tracked for between 9 and 54 days. Corresponding simulations were conducted offline based on surface currents from two independent models (BSHcmod and TRIM). Inclusion of a direct wind drag (0.6 % of 10 m wind) was needed for successful simulations based on BSHcmod currents archived for a 5 m depth surface layer. Adding 50 % o...