Marine heat wave and global warming inhibition of gelatinous zooplankton related carbon fluxes into the deep ocean

Gelatinous zooplankton (GZ) has recently been proposed as one of the potential key contributors to the global biological carbon pump, a process that sequesters substantial amounts of CO2 in the deep ocean through sinking organic matter. We derive a first dynamically consistent physical model
coupling GZ sinking speed to its mass, to provide high-resolution visualization of global vertical transport of GZ-derived carbon. We propose an improvement to microbial decay modeling, where the GZ biomass degradation rate is a function of its area rather than mass. We use these models to quantify marine heat wave (MHW) inhibitions of the vertical carbon fluxes into deep global ocean. We find that marine heatwaves accelerate GZ decay and subsequently slow their sinking velocity, which leads to an inhibition of carbon export of up to some 10\% locally. This difference, however, can reduce the global carbon export only up to 5 %. We further repeat all the simulations under ocean warming climate projection SSP2-4.5 and SSP5-8.5 pathways. Here, in contrast to MHW inhibitions, model projections at the end of the \nth{21} century suggest a major decrease in carbon export to the deep ocean of up to 20 % globally.