Geographical, seasonal, and depth variation in sinking particle speeds in the North Atlantic

Particle sinking velocity is considered to be a controlling factor for carbon transport to the deep sea and thus carbon sequestration in the oceans. The velocities of the material exported to depth are considered to be high in high‐latitude productive systems and low in oligotrophic distributions. We use a recently developed method based on the measurement of the radioactive pair 210Po‐210Pb to calculate particle sinking velocities in the temperate and oligotrophic North Atlantic during different bloom stages. Our estimates of average sinking velocities (ASVs) show that slowly sinking particles (