Megacities and large urban agglomerations in the coastal zone: interactions between atmosphere, land, and marine ecosystems.

Megacities are not only important drivers for socio-economic development but also sources of environmental challenges. Many megacities and large urban agglomerations are located in the coastal zone where land, atmosphere, and ocean meet, posing multiple environmental challenges which we consider here. The atmospheric flow around megacities is complicated by urban heat island effects and topographic flows and sea breezes and influences air pollution and human health. The outflow of polluted air over the ocean perturbs biogeochemical processes. Contaminant inputs can damage downstream coastal zone ecosystem function and resources including fisheries, induce harmful algal blooms and feedback to the atmosphere via marine emissions. The scale of influence of megacities in the coastal zone is hundreds to thousands of kilometers in the atmosphere and tens to hundreds of kilometers in the ocean. We list research needs to further our understanding of coastal megacities with the ultimate aim to improve their environmental management.

Changing atmospheric acidity as a modulator of nutrient deposition and ocean biogeochemistry.

Anthropogenic emissions to the atmosphere have increased the flux of nutrients, especially nitrogen, to the ocean, but they have also altered the acidity of aerosol, cloud water, and precipitation over much of the marine atmosphere. For nitrogen, acidity-driven changes in chemical speciation result in altered partitioning between the gas and particulate phases that subsequently affect long-range transport. Other important nutrients, notably iron and phosphorus, are affected, because their soluble fractions increase upon exposure to acidic environments during atmospheric transport. These changes affect the magnitude, distribution, and deposition mode of individual nutrients supplied to the ocean, the extent to which nutrient deposition interacts with the sea surface microlayer during its passage into bulk seawater, and the relative abundances of soluble nutrients in atmospheric deposition. Atmospheric acidity change therefore affects ecosystem composition, in addition to overall marine productivity, and these effects will continue to evolve with changing anthropogenic emissions in the future.

The distribution of iodide at the sea surface.

Recent studies have highlighted the impact of sea surface iodide concentrations on the deposition of ozone to the sea surface and the sea to air flux of reactive iodine. The use of models to predict this flux demands accurate, spatially distributed sea surface iodide concentrations, but to date, the observational data required to support this is sparse and mostly arises from independent studies conducted on small geographical and temporal scales. We have compiled the available measurements of sea surface iodide to produce a data set spanning latitudes from 69°S to 66°N, which reveals a coherent, large scale distribution pattern, with highest concentrations observed in tropical waters. Relationships between iodide concentration and more readily available parameters (chlorophyll, nitrate, sea surface temperature, salinity, mixed layer depth) are evaluated as tools to predict iodide concentration. Of the variables tested, sea surface temperature is the strongest predictor of iodide concentration. Nitrate was also strongly inversely associated with iodide concentration, but chlorophyll-a was not.