The Evolution of Southern Ocean Net Primary Production in a Changing Climate: Challenges and Opportunities

Net primary production in the Southern Ocean plays a critical role in governing ecosystem production, the biological carbon pump, and global biogeochemical cycles. Recent work has advanced our understanding of novel factors regulating Southern Ocean net primary production and the regional physiological adaptations employed by Southern Ocean phytoplankton in terms of their photosynthetic strategies and resource acquisition. Here we assess trends in Southern Ocean net primary production from different remote sensing algorithms and bgc-Argo floats to compare them to the latest Earth System Models used to forecast future changes under three different future climate scenarios. Overall, remote sensing and bgc-Argo floats indicate net primary productivity in the Southern Ocean is declining at basin scale. This contrasts with the Earth System Models that display muted contemporary trends and consistent increases in net primary production that are relatively robust across SSP2-45, SSP3-70, and SS5-85. This mismatch in trends suggests low confidence in these projected net primary production changes, with implications for assessments of changes in ecosystem services. Despite their coherence in terms of net primary production trends, Earth System Models show large disagreement in the relative role of different drivers, suggesting we lack sufficient mechanistic understanding. Improved knowledge of the role of manganese alongside iron and the coupled responses of phytoplankton and zooplankton through the integration of observations and experiments into a new generation of models is necessary to deliver confident forecasts of Southern Ocean ecosystem change. Advancing knowledge in these areas is an important priority for future research in the region and provides context for policy discussions around the marine protection of Antarctic ecosystems that depend on sufficiently confident projections of climate change impacts.