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.

Linking the calcium carbonate and alkalinity cycles in the North Pacific ocean

December 13, 2022

The marine carbon and alkalinity cycles are tightly coupled. Seawater stores so much carbon because of its high alkalinity, or buffering capacity, and the main driver of alkalinity cycling is the formation and dissolution of biologically produced calcium carbonate (CaCO3). In a recent publication in GBC, the authors conducted novel carbon-13 tracer experiments to measure […]

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Summer Reading – Science Highlights Galore!

August 26, 2022

We’ve gotten a heap of great submissions in recent months and we’ve gathered 11 pieces here for your summer reading! Check out the Science Highlights page to read them all, and thank you to the authors for sharing summaries of their recent work!

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Drivers of recent Chesapeake Bay warming

August 26, 2022

Coastal water temperatures have been increasing globally with more frequent marine heat waves threatening marine life and nearshore communities reliant upon these ecosystems. Often, this warming is assumed to be uniform in space and time; however, this is not the case in the Chesapeake Bay, where warming waters play a major role in exacerbating low […]

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Nutrient management improves hypoxia in the Chesapeake Bay despite record-breaking precipitation and warming

August 26, 2022

Hypoxia is currently one of the greatest threats to coastal and estuarine ecosystems around the world, and this threat is projected to get worse as waters warm and human populations continue to increase. Over the past 35-years, a massive effort has been underway to decrease hypoxia in the Chesapeake Bay by reducing nutrient input from […]

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Integrated analysis of carbon dioxide and oxygen concentrations as a quality control of ocean float data

August 26, 2022

A recent study in Communications Earth & Environment, examined spatiotemporal patterns of the two dissolved gases CO2 and O2 in the surface ocean, using the high-quality global dataset GLODAPv2.2020. We used surface ocean data from GLODAP to make plots of carbon dioxide and oxygen relative to saturation (CORS plots). These plots of CO2 deviations from […]

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Why are sand lance embryos so sensitive to future high CO2-oceans?

August 26, 2022

Two decades of ocean acidification experiments have shown that elevated CO2 can affect many traits in fish early life stages. Only few species, however, show direct CO2-induced survival reductions. This may partly reflect a bias in our current empirical record, which is dominated by species from nearshore tropical-to-temperate environments. There, these organisms already experience highly […]

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Seaweeds for carbon dioxide removal: Forensic accounting is essential

August 26, 2022

Terrestrial forests are well known as major carbon stores and are already used in carbon credit and offset schemes. In the coastal zone, seaweeds have a similar functional role to trees (carbon dioxide fixation, primary production) and on this basis are being promoted for use as carbon offsets. However, compared to terrestrial forests in which […]

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Is it a shift of the surface ecosystem toward small cells in the eastern North Pacific subtropical gyre?

August 26, 2022

The eastern North Pacific subtropical gyre (NPSG) ecosystem contains a large proportion of the ocean surface, resulting in a significant impact on the global ocean primary production and export production. The NPSG is influenced by the interannual climate variabilities of the Pacific decadal oscillation and North Pacific gyre oscillation (NPGO). In particular, a recent report […]

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How does the competition between phytoplankton and bacteria for iron alter ocean biogeochemical cycles?

August 26, 2022

Free-living bacteria play a key role in cycling essential biogeochemical resources in the ocean, including iron, via their uptake, transformation, and release of organic matter throughout the water column. Bacteria process half of the ocean’s primary production, remineralize dissolved organic matter, and re-direct otherwise lost organic matter to higher trophic levels. For these reasons, it […]

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Carbon fluxes in the coastal ocean: Synthesis, boundary processes and future trends

August 26, 2022

A vital part of mitigating climate change is the coastal and open ocean carbon sink, without this, it is not possible to meet the target set by the Paris Agreement. More research is needed to better understand the ocean carbon cycle and its future role in the uptake of anthropogenic carbon. A review provides an […]

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