Ocean Carbon & Biogeochemistry

June is Pride Month!

Help build a LGBTQIA2S+ Marine Science Community Dear Community, We need your help! We are conducting a survey to gauge the needs of the LGBTQIA2S+ (i.e., “Queer”) community within the Marine Science field. We would appreciate your input in the linked survey to better understand where a professional organization could help support our community and […]

Dive into the 10y review of the OCB program and related science!

OCB2024 in person and online June 10-13

In person registration for OCB2024 is full, but virtual registration remains open. Visit the workshop website to register for Zoom and view most updated draft agenda!

NEW ACTIVITY: participation opportunity for metatranscriptomic intercomparison

A new OCB Activity is kicking off: Intercomparison of metatranscriptomic methods for characterizing microbial eukaryote contributions to the biological carbon pump There are opportunities to speak and suggest speakers and themes in the bimonthly webinar series. And to participate in the intercomparison activities. Learn more and apply

Leaky Deltas Webinars & Workshop

Scoping Workshop: Leaky deltas: sources or sinks in the global carbon cycle? March 17-20, 2025 Louisiana State Univ. (Baton Rouge, LA) Express your interest in this topic and sign up for email updates Webinar Series May 30: Bob Aller – Shoreward transport in deltaic systems: the coastal vacuum and reactive particle processing Watch webinar recordings […]

OCB mCDR Updates

OCB Principles of Engagement on mCDR Given the broad and thriving mCDR landscape, the OCB SSC recently developed a Principles of Engagement document to help guide new research activities, collaborations, and communications around mCDR. Read the document HERE. Must Read on mCDR Regional Node Updates Gulf of Mexico Node Activities GMx regional node 1st zoom […]

Ocean Carbon Exchange

Find jobs, funding and student opps, read news from the OCB Project Office, community and partner organizations, view upcoming meeting and deadlines and more in the Ocean Carbon Exchange eNewsletter. Read the latest issue and sign up here. Please send announcements to ocb_news@whoi.edu.

Recent Science Highlights

An unexpected shift to a later phytoplankton bloom in the West Antarctic Peninsula

Polar regions are changing: warming, losing sea ice, and experiencing shifts in the phenology of seasonal events. Global models predict that phytoplankton blooms will start earlier in these warming polar environments. What we don’t know is will this be true for all high-latitude regions? Is the timing of phytoplankton growing season moving earlier in the […]

Inorganic carbon outwelling as important blue carbon sink

Blue carbon ecosystems—mangroves, saltmarshes, and seagrass meadows—carbon sequestration powerhouses that can help us mitigate climate change. For many years, our community has focused on studying and quantifying organic carbon storage in the soils of these ecosystems and crediting it as Blue Carbon in carbon markets. A new paper in Nature Communications reveals that much of […]

New algorithm unclogs major bottleneck in ocean geochemical and biogeochemical modelling

Numerical models are some of the principal tools for understanding the cycling of geochemical and biogeochemical tracers in the ocean, with the latter also being important components of the Earth System Models used to project future climate change. However, in order to use these models they must first be integrated to a seasonally-repeating equilibrium with […]

Looking for easy data access to high quality time-series data? SPOTS is out!

Whether we aim to disentangle anthropogenic driven trends from naturally variability or we want to assess and improve our ocean model’s capabilities to correctly display changes in time, all require high-quality observational data from multiple fixed time-series data. Until now access to these data was difficult, time-consuming, and often required solving multiple data challenges before […]

Mixotrophs in the northern North Atlantic

Mixotrophs (or mixoplankton) are now accepted as a third group of plankton alongside phytoplankton and zooplankton. Our knowledge of mixotrophs lags far behind that of the other two groups. We currently have only a limited understanding of mixotrophs’ biogeographical distribution across ocean basins, and what environmental factors are associated with their distribution. The authors of […]

Carbon sequestration by the biological pump is not exclusive to the deep ocean

The biological carbon pump plays a key role in ocean carbon sequestration by transporting organic carbon from the upper ocean to deeper waters via three broad processes: the sinking of organic particles, vertical migration of organisms, and physical mixing. Most studies assume that century-scale carbon sequestration occurs only in the deep ocean, thus have missed […]