Intense ventilation of the Black Sea pycnocline due to vertical turbulent exchange in the Rim Current area

- Deep ventilation events occur sporadically in the pycnocline in the Rim Current area.
- Oxygen concentration rises to 44.66 μM for short periods at the 15.5 kg/m3 isopycnal.
- Ventilation leads to increase of temperature by ~0.2 °C in Cold Intermediate Layer.
- The ventilation events should be more frequent when the Rim Current is intensified.

This paper presents new observational data, which indicate that deep ventilation events in the aerobic zone extending across the upper part of the permanent pycnocline may occur sporadically in the Rim Current area, even during relatively warm seasons, when the seasonal thermocline is still notable. The strongest observed event of this type occurred on November 2014 off the continental shelf break near Gelendzhik Bay. Vertical profiles of dissolved oxygen were accurately measured using an SBE 52-MP Conductivity, Temperature, Depth (CTD) probe equipped with a fast-response SBE 43F oxygen sensor mounted on a moored Aqualog automatic mobile profiler. The analysis of the profiling data from October 6 through December 16, 2014, from depths between 35 m and 215 m revealed an anomaly on November 6-7. The dissolved oxygen exceeded the background levels by more than 0.2 ml/l (8.9 μM) at the 14.9-15.7 kg/m3 isopycnals in the pycnocline and reached approximately 1 ml/l (44.66 μM) for short periods. The peak absolute value of the dissolved oxygen reached an exceptionally high value of approximately 0.3 ml/l (13.4 μM) at the 15.9 kg/m3 isopycnal. The ventilation event increased the temperature by ~0.2 °C at depths of 120-160 m. The simultaneous observations of both the thermohaline stratification and the ocean currents suggest that the ventilation event was associated with the sinking of pycnocline waters in the near-bottom Ekman layer along the continental slope and intense vertical turbulent exchange in the Rim Current area near the continental slope. The ventilation of the pycnocline when the overlaying upper ocean is stably stratified sharply differs from the convection reaching the Cold Intermediate Layer during extensive cooling of the sea surface. Indications of such ventilation events were also found in the Aqualog mooring data archive from 2012.