Impact of Riverine Lithogenic Material (RLM) Ballasting on Simulated Global Ocean POC Flux

The scatter plot in Figure 3 and the Taylor diagram in Figure 4 indicate that there is no significant difference in the quality of simulated global ocean POC flux between the control group and the sensitive experimental group, despite changes in the concentration of river source rock materials and the distance of diffusion towards the open sea. This suggests that considering the effect of RLM ballasting did not significantly improve the simulation effect of global ocean POC flux, but it also did not cause any adverse effects. This does not mean that the simulation effect of the sensitive experimental group in the marginal sea has not changed, but it may be due to the fact that there is less sediment trap data collected in the marginal sea, which has a smaller impact on the overall correlation and regression slope. It is worth mentioning that although the change in simulation effect is not significant, the inclusion of RLM ballasting effect without logarithmic transformation has slightly enhanced the correlation coefficient between the simulated results of POC flux and the observed values, from 0.58 in the control group to the highest value of 0.68 in the sensitive experimental group, especially in the sensitive experimental group where RLM moves along the continental shelf and slope towards the ocean.