Pumping of nutrients to ocean surface waters by the action of propagating planetary waves

Primary productivity in the oceans is limited by the lack of nutrients in surface waters. These nutrients are mostly supplied from nutrient-rich subsurface waters through upwelling and vertical mixing1, but in the ocean gyres these mechanisms do not fully account for the observed productivity2. Recently, the upward pumping of nutrients, through the action of eddies, has been shown to account for the remainder of the primary productivity; however, these were regional studies which focused on mesoscale (100-km-scale) eddies3,4,5,6. Here we analyse remotely sensed chlorophyll and sea-surface-height data collected over two years and show that 1,000-km-scale planetary waves, which propagate in a westward direction in the oceans, are associated with about 5 to 20% of the observed variability in chlorophyll concentration (after low-frequency and large-scale variations are removed from the data). Enhanced primary production is the likely explanation for this observation, and if that is the case, propagating disturbances introduce nutrients to surface waters on a global scale—similar to the nutrient pumping that occurs within distinct eddies.