The cadmium-phosphate relationship in the western South Atlantic - The importance of mode and intermediate waters on the global systematics

These variations in Cd and Cd/PO4 ratios are consistent with phytoplankton uptake in the surface ocean at higher Cd/PO4 ratios compared to deep water Redfield Cd/PO4 ratios, and remineralization of high Cd/PO4 organic particles as they sink to depth. In addition, a comparison of Cd and PO4 distributions in waters within the depth range of Subantarctic Mode Water (SAMW) in our study and those in the source regions suggests that SAMW plays an important role in the non-linearity of the Cd-PO4 correlation in the global ocean. On the other hand, intermediate waters at the equatorial stations display significantly lower Cd compared to the southern stations in this study. We attribute this to the influence of low-Cd waters originating in the oxygen-depleted zone (ODZ) of the Angola Basin that are brought in via the Benguela and Equatorial Currents. In the deep ocean (> 1000 m), the meridional distributions of dissolved Cd concentrations and Cd/PO4 ratios reflect mixing between North Atlantic Deep Water (NADW) (low nutrients, low Cd/PO4 ratios) and Antarctic Bottom Water (AABW) (high nutrients, high Cd/PO4 ratios), showing that dissolved Cd and PO4 can reliably trace deep ocean circulation in the modern ocean.