OCB Science Highlights

OCB Science Highlights

If you would like to have your recent publications featured on the OCB website and eNewsletter please contact ocb_news@whoi.edu. View our guidelines for writing a OCB Science Highlight.

El Niño-driven changes in the tropical Pacific O2 content and structure

April29,2026

What drives the year-to-year variability of dissolved oxygen (O2) in the tropical Pacific? A recent study explored this question using a global high-resolution model with active ocean biogeochemistry along with a machine learning based estimate of dissolved oxygen from Argo floats. El Niño and La Niña events play a major role in regulating the O2 […]

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When plastics slip into the carbon cycle

April29,2026

What if a tiny amount of plastic could make the ocean’s carbon appear thousands of years older than it really is? For decades, oceanographers have relied on routine measurements of particulate organic carbon to understand how carbon moves through the ocean, how long it persists, and how it shapes Earth’s climate. These measurements, based on […]

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Improving our view of particle attenuation in the Southern Ocean with BGC-Argo floats

March24,2026

How much organic carbon is actually transported to depth in the Southern Ocean and what are the mechanisms driving seasonal and regional variability? With large-scale remote sensing observations constrained to the surface and the depth-resolved ship-based measurements being scarce, the emergence of the BGC-Argo fleet has opened up a new avenue to explore how carbon […]

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New unified interface for existing ocean carbonate chemistry data products

March24,2026

The paper provides a comprehensive synthesis of 68 existing ocean carbonate chemistry data products and data product sets, including cruise-based compilations, time-series datasets, gap-filled observational products, and model-based reconstructions. The authors highlight the diversity of available products, noting differences in spatial coverage, temporal resolution, methodologies, and intended scientific applications. By systematically cataloguing and comparing these […]

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How much carbon do fish move towards the seafloor as they feed and migrate in the water column?

March24,2026

Ocean organisms transfer carbon via many natural processes from surface to seafloor. These include the passive sinking of carbon-rich particles and the active transport of carbon as animals swim downward. A recent study in GBC modeled how carbon stored in fish biomass moves from the sea surface to the seafloor in shelf–slope–abyssal systems through feeding […]

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The ocean is the largest natural carbon sink for atmospheric CO2

January23,2026

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 […]

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

January23,2026

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 […]

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A Microbial Conveyor Belt Beneath the South Pacific

October17,2025

Global overturning circulation is a planetary conveyor belt: dense waters sink around Antarctica, spread through the deep ocean for centuries, and eventually rise elsewhere, redistributing heat, nutrients, and carbon. But how does this slow, pervasive movement of water impact marine microbes?   To find out, researchers collected over 300 water samples spanning the full depth […]

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Marine plant metabolites give marine microbes gas

October17,2025

A recent study in Nature Geosciences observed high concentrations of methane overlying permeable (sand) sand sediments in bays in Denmark and Australia. These environments are not one would expect to see methane because they are highly oxygenated and the high concentrations of sulfate in seawater typically inhibit methanogenesis. The authors showed that the methane was […]

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From smoke to sea, how wildfire ash reshapes ocean microbial life

September26,2025

When wildfire smoke drifts over the ocean, what happens beneath the waves? As wildfires change in nature and become more frequent, it’s increasingly important to understand how ash deposition affects the ocean’s smallest, yet most essential, inhabitants. In a recent study, the authors investigated how wildfire ash leachate influences coastal microbial communities. Through field incubations […]

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