Reconstruction of sea surface dimethylsulfide in the North Pacific during 1970s to 2000s

We proposed an empirical equation of sea surface dimethylsulfide (DMS, nM) using sea surface temperature (SST, K), sea surface nitrate (SSN, μM) and latitude (L, °N) to reconstruct the sea surface flux of DMS over the North Pacific between 25°N and 55°N: ln DMS = 0.06346 • SST − 0.1210 • SSN − 14.11 • cos(L) − 6.278 (R2 = 0.63, p < 0.0001). Applying our algorithm to climatological hydrographic data in the North Pacific, we reconstructed the climatological distributions of DMS and its flux between 25 °N and 55 °N. DMS generally increased eastward and northward, and DMS in the northeastern region became to 2–5 times as large as that in the southwestern region. DMS in the later half of the year was 2–4 times as large as that in the first half of the year. Moreover, applying our algorithm to hydrographic time series datasets in the western North Pacific from 1971 to 2000, we found that DMS in the last three decades has shown linear increasing trends of 0.03 ± 0.01 nM year− 1 in the subpolar region, and 0.01 ± 0.001 nM year− 1 in the subtropical region, indicating that the annual flux of DMS from sea to air has increased by 1.9–4.8 μmol m− 2 year− 1. The linear increase was consistent with the annual rate of increase of 1% of the climatological averaged flux in the western North Pacific in the last three decades.