Author Archive for mmaheigan

New Activity: SedMIP

Posted by mmaheigan 
· Friday, February 13th, 2026 

A new OCB activity is underway: SedMIP: Sediment Biogeochemistry Model Intercomparison Project. Learn more and participate in this collaborative effort to systematically evaluate and improve benthic biogeochemical models:

Attend the Town Hall at OSM26: TH23A: Advancing Benthic Modeling: Introducing SedBGC_MIP, a Community-Driven Model Intercomparison Initiative
TUESDAY, February 24, 12:45-1:45p GMT in Hall3. The Abyss – SEC

–> Sign up for updates

–>give a webinar talk

–>take a short survey to help inform this activity.

www.us-ocb.org/sedmip/

In Memoriam: Frank J. Millero

Posted by mmaheigan 
· Thursday, February 12th, 2026 

With great sadness, we share the news that Frank J. Millero passed away on December 25, 2025, at the age of 86. Frank was a titan and pioneer of marine chemistry whose foundational work on the physical chemistry of natural waters reshaped our understanding of the ocean, particularly in the areas of carbon and trace metal cycling. After earning his Bachelor’s degree from Ohio State University (1961), Master’s degree and Ph.D. from the Carnegie Institute of Technology (1964 and 1965, respectively), he conducted a short stint in industry studying automobile pollution and catalytic efficiency. He joined the faculty at the University of Miami’s Marine Laboratory (now called the Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science) in 1966 and remained there until his retirement in 2015. His early work in the 1960s and 70s refined and improved the definition and measurement of salinity, resulting in the development of the practical salinity scale (1978), used universally by every oceanographer. He famously hated the use of PSU as a unit for salinity (practical salinity is unitless), and as editor-in-chief of Marine Chemistry (1992 – 2017), he maintained a policy that any paper mentioning PSU would be rejected without review. Along with several colleagues, that work culminated with the thermodynamic equation of state 2010 (TEOS-10) and the development of reference and absolute salinities (which do have units). His early work on the speed of sound in seawater is still used daily to determine water depth.

Frank is perhaps most known for his work on the carbonate system and ocean acidification.  He dedicated significant efforts to understanding the partitioning of the carbonate species in seawater through measurements of the apparent dissociation constants, providing several formulations that are widely used in the carbon cycling community. He wrote QuickBASIC proto versions of what some of his students would later develop into the widely adopted CO2sys program for carbon dioxide (CO2) system calculations. He was passionate about conducting science through direct observations and field work, and always provided ample opportunities for students to go to sea, which was an unofficial requirement for all his students before they graduated. He published one of the first papers (1979) using direct observations to demonstrate that the CO2 of the oceans was indeed increasing due to uptake of fossil fuel emissions as had been hypothesized. He continued studying this uptake and its impacts (such as ocean acidification) for the remainder of his career.

He received numerous honors and awards, but he once said his proudest accomplishments were his students when they published work done in his lab. Summarizing his amazing 50+ year career and all of the ways his work continues to touch and influence the fields of carbon chemistry and oceanography in general would be impossible. For those who knew him, he was not only a great scientist but a dedicated mentor and a kind and generous man. He always had a story to tell, and often it was on his office balcony overlooking Biscayne Bay with a Corona in hand. He will be sorely missed.

We are collecting memories and stories of Frank to share with his wife Judy and family. Please send any you wish to share to Dennis Hansell (dhansell@miami.edu) and Ryan Woosley (rwoosley@mit.edu)

Photo credit Annual Review of Marine Science (Millero, F.J., 2015) https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-marine-010814-015946

NEW OCB Activity: Metabarcoding Intercal

Posted by mmaheigan 
· Tuesday, February 10th, 2026 

This new activity has just launched and there are multiple opportunities to get involved.

→Sign up and nominate speakers for the bi-monthly webinar series. Self-nominations are encouraged.

→Apply to join the working group. Participants will be expected to prepare and analyze samples for 16S or 18S sequences and attend a synthesis meeting either in-person or virtually. Detailed protocols and workflows are expected to be made publicly available.

→Learn more about this activity

Sign up or nominate speakers for the bi-monthly webinar series
Apply to join the working group

Seeking nominations for new OCB Subcommittee Ocean Carbonate System Intercomparison Forum (OCSIF)

Posted by mmaheigan 
· Thursday, January 29th, 2026 

We are currently seeking nominations for members of a newly established OCSIF topical subcommittee of the OCB SSC – the Ocean Carbonate System Intercomparison Forum (OCSIF). This subcommittee has its origins in the OCB OCSIF working group focused on identifying and addressing uncertainties in the seawater carbonate system and increasing measurement inter-comparability, with goals of advocating for and sparking collaborations to address these issues and providing guidance for data reporting and documentation while fostering engagement across career stages and global participation. We aim to include a range of expertise and career stages, including very early career scientists (0-4 years since PhD). Non-US applicants are encouraged to apply, as we will aim to include at least 1-2 non-US members on the subcommittee at all times. The subcommittee will include up to 15 members. We are seeking a range of expertise pertaining to the ocean carbonate system, including:

  • Ocean carbonate system measurements (pH, total alkalinity, dissolved inorganic carbon, and pCO2)
  • Carbonate system reference material/metrology
  • Ocean carbonate system calculations, software, and modeling
  • Ocean carbonate system autonomous sensors
  • Data product development
  • Organic acids and organic alkalinity
  • Ocean acidification
  • Inorganic carbon cycling
  • Marine carbon dioxide removal
  • Marine physical chemistry
  • Coastal and estuarine carbonate cycling

Please submit your nominations to the OCB Project Office using this nomination form by March 13, 2026. Self-nominations are welcome and encouraged!

OCB subcommittee membership terms are typically ~2-4 years, but a detailed charge and terms of reference for this new subcommittee will be established by its inaugural members. The inaugural co-chairs of this subcommittee will be Ryan Woosley (MIT) and Katelyn Schockman (U Miami/NOAA). The OCB Project Office will oversee the nomination and election process. Discussion of nominees and scoring via electronic ballot will be carried out by a small committee of subject matter experts, including Ryan and Katelyn.

The ocean is the largest natural carbon sink for atmospheric CO2

Posted by mmaheigan 
· Friday, January 23rd, 2026 

Only about half of human-made CO2 emissions remain in the atmosphere and drive global warming. The other half has so far been said to be taken up in roughly equal amounts by the biosphere on land and by physical-chemical processes in the ocean. In equal amounts?

In a new assessment, Friedlingstein et al. reassess the various components of the Global Carbon Budget. Major changes were suggested for the land and ocean sinks. For the land, the prior assumption of a preindustrial land-cover in the Dynamic Global Vegetation Models (DGVM) led to an overestimation of the natural land sink in previous studies. The land sink is further revised downwards by accounting for an anthropogenic perturbation of lateral carbon export to the ocean. For the ocean, adjustments were made for the known underestimation of the ocean sink from Global Ocean Biogeochemical Models and the cool and salty skin effect in surface fCO2-observation-based estimates. As a result, the ocean is now estimated to have taken up 29% of anthropogenic CO2 emissions in the last decade 2015-2024, while the land sink has taken up 21%. In this revised estimate with virtually no budget imbalance over the last decade and no significant trend in the budget imbalance since 1960, climate-driven impacts on the natural sinks are quantified: Land and ocean sinks would be 25% and 7% higher, respectively, without this carbon-climate feedback. Since 1960, the carbon-climate feedback has already contributed 8 ppm (8%) to the rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration.

The negative imprints of earth system changes (e.g., warming, droughts, changes in wind patterns and ocean circulation, etc.) on these important carbon sinks is worrisome and is expected to intensify as warming continues. The most effective way to protect these sinks is to drastically reduce CO2 emissions from fossil fuels and land-use changes, ultimately to net zero.

 

Authors
Judith Hauck (Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research, University of Bremen)
Peter Landschützer (VLIZ)
Corinne Le Quéré (University of East Anglia)
Pierre Friedlingstein (University of Exeter)

Bluesky: @pfriedling @jhauck @clequere

A heat burp breaks the assumed relationship of cumulative CO2 emissions and warming

Posted by mmaheigan 
· Friday, January 23rd, 2026 

The ocean stores vast amounts of heat and carbon under anthropogenic CO₂ emissions, but its behavior under net-negative emission scenarios remains poorly understood. Here we use an Earth System Model of intermediate complexity and show results of an idealized future climate scenario that includes sustained net-negative emissions over centuries. After gradual global cooling, the model produces an abrupt “heat burp,” in which heat previously stored in the deep Southern Ocean resurfaces through deep convection, temporarily reversing the cooling and causing renewed warming. The release of heat is not accompanied by a comparable release of CO₂. The heat burp represents a breakdown of the assumed linear relationship between cumulative CO₂ emissions and warming, a metric that is used to calculate the remaining carbon budget. We call for assessing the robustness of how models forced with net-negative CO₂ emissions simulate durability of ocean storage of heat and CO₂, and pathways and time scales of loss to the atmosphere.

 

Fig caption: The temporal evolution of (a) global heat and carbon uptake and release; (b) surface air temperature (SAT) anomaly relative to preindustrial conditions; (c) Southern Ocean temperature anomaly relative to preindustrial conditions; gray shading/black bar indicate the period of comparatively abrupt ocean heat release that warms SAT, representing a climate feedback.

 

Authors
(all at GEOMAR)

Ivy Frenger
Svenja Frey (and Univ Copenhagen)
Andreas Oschlies
Julia Getzlaff
Torge Martin
Wolfgang Koeve

 

Frenger, I., Frey, S., Oschlies, A., Getzlaff, J., Martin, T., & Koeve, W. (2025). Southern Ocean heat burp in a cooling world. AGU Advances, 6, e2025AV001700. https://doi.org/10.1029/2025AV001700

OCB Elects Four New SSC Members

Posted by mmaheigan 
· Friday, January 23rd, 2026 

OCB is excited to welcome the following new members to the Scientific Steering Committee:

Angela Knapp (TAMU) – marine biochemistry, nitrogen fixation, dissolved organic nutrients, marine nitrogen stable isotope geochemistry

Elaine Luo (UNC Charlotte) – microbial ecology, computational biology, metagenomics

 

David Harning (CU Boulder) – paleoclimatology, geochemistry, carbon burial, Arctic climate change, carbon dioxide removal

 

Hope Ianiri (USGS, early career member) – marine organic carbon and nitrogen cycles, long-term carbon storage in marine environments

The SSC has also elected Jessica Luo (NOAA/GFDL) as its next vice chair, and Randie Bundy (UW) has rotated into the SSC Chair position.

 

We extend our sincere gratitude to outgoing SSC members P. Dreux Chappell (USF, SSC Chair from 2025-2026), David “Roo” Nicholson (WHOI), Anela Choy (SIO), and Yige Zhang (formerly TAMU, now at Guangzhou Institute of Geochemistry, CAS).

 

Call for Papers: SOLAS–OLAR Special Section on Greenhouse Gas Budgets Across the Land–Ocean Continuum

Posted by mmaheigan 
· Monday, December 29th, 2025 

SOLAS and Ocean–Land–Atmosphere Research (OLAR) are pleased to invite submissions to a special section entitled “Greenhouse Gas Budgets Across the Land–Ocean Continuum” throughout 2026.

Greenhouse gas (carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide) uptake, production and emission rates in near-coastal systems remain highly uncertain, yet their quantification is crucial to both adequately assess domestic and global inventories in view of ongoing climate change, and to enable accurate reporting as well as effective mitigation measures. This special section welcomes contributions addressing greenhouse gas cycling and emissions in coastal to offshore environments, spanning natural, climate change induced, and other anthropogenic sources/sinks (e.g. aquaculture, waste water plants, river discharge). The aim of the special section is to present a holistic synthesis of the current state-of-the-science in greenhouse gas budgets across the land-ocean continuum.

Key Highlights:
• Article Processing Charges (APCs) are fully waived
• Accepted manuscripts are eligible for a free figure polishing service provided by the China Central Academy of Fine Arts
• Submissions are encouraged throughout 2026
Authors can submit at https://www.editorialmanager.com/olar/ or visit the OLAR journal website at https://spj.science.org/journal/olar. When submitting, select the topic titled “Greenhouse gas budgets across the land-ocean continuum”.

New Air-Sea book chapter

Posted by mmaheigan 
· Friday, December 19th, 2025 

Stanley, R. H. R. and Bell, T. G.: “Air-sea gas exchange and marine gases”, in: Treatise in Geochemistry, 3rd Edition ed., edited by: Andbar, A., and Weis, D., Elsevier, 2024.
Read it here

Mentee + Mentor opp at OSM26 with OAIC – apps closed

Posted by mmaheigan 
· Wednesday, December 17th, 2025 
Dear members of the air-sea interaction community,
We invite you to participate in a low time-commitment, flexible and hopefully helpful mentoring event at the Ocean Sciences Meeting in Glasgow. We are setting up a near-peer mentoring program. We expect it to be about a 2 hour commitment for mentors or mentees – spending a bit of time before the meeting prepping and then having one in person get-together (coffee break, lunch, drinks, etc.) at OSM.. For those interested, we will be matching  participants with a next-stage mentor (i.e. grad student with postdoc, postdoc with early faculty, early faculty with late faculty) prior to the conference. The mentoring pair will pick a time that works for both of them to meet during the conference week – we recommend a coffee break on Monday or Tuesday or meeting up directly after sessions end one of those days, but the timing is completely up to you. We suggest that mentors and mentees email each other introductions before the event as well as coordinate schedules. There are cafes and pubs near the conference centers that you could use for your meeting, or you could meet in one of the common spaces of the conference center itself.
Anyone attending the conference is welcome to sign up, even though our committee focuses on researchers who work in the general field of the upper ocean, lower atmosphere, or the interactions between. Please use the link below to sign up if you want to be a mentor, a mentee or both. And please forward this email to friends and colleagues who you think might be interested.
Applications are now closed.
Best wishes, the OAIC (the Ocean Atmosphere Interaction Committee)
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Funding for the Ocean Carbon & Biogeochemistry Project Office is provided by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The OCB Project Office is housed at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.