North Atlantic Synthesis Group: Hugh Ducklow¹, Mike Fasham², Emilio Fernandez³, Véronique Garçon⁴*, W. Glenn Harrison⁵, Wolfgang Koeve⁶, Roy Lowry⁷, Laurent Mémery⁸ and David Siegel⁹

¹VIMS, Gloucester Point, USA, ²SOC/NERC, Southampton, UK, ³University of Vigo, Vigo, Spain, ⁴LEGOS/CNRS, Toulouse, France, Tel: +33561332957, Fax: +33561253205, E-mail: veronique.garcon@cnes.fr, ⁵Bedford Institute of Oceanography, Dartmouth, Canada, ⁶MARUM, University of Bremen, Bremen, Germany, ⁷BODC, Prenton, UK, ⁸LODYC/CNRS, Paris France, ⁹University of California, Santa Barbara, USA

Time series and process study sites in the North Atlantic during the JGOFS decade

During the JGOFS era, intensive field studies in the North Atlantic have been carried out through either regional process studies or time-series stations distributed in various biogeochemical provinces. We highlight here each of them (NABE, BOFS, POMME, CANIGO, EUMELI, AMT, CARIACO, BATS, the Northwest Atlantic, PRIME) and present examples of their major findings. For example, the carbon balance of the upper ocean in the subtropical North East Atlantic (CANIGO), the estimation of the interannual variability of the carbon sink at BATS and its connection with the NAO, the importance of coccolithophorids during the spring/summer bloom of the subarctic North Atlantic (BOFS), the impact of mesoscale dynamics on the subduction rate of the mode waters and on the onset and intensity of the spring bloom (POMME), are among the achievements of the JGOFS process and time series programs from the North Atlantic.