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.

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

April 18, 2024

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 […]

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Mixotrophs in the northern North Atlantic

April 16, 2024

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 […]

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

April 16, 2024

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 […]

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Turbulent Mixing: A Dominant Source of Oxygen in the Upper Equatorial Pacific

March 12, 2024

What balances oxygen removal in the equatorial Pacific? For a long time, oxygen in the eastern and central tropical Pacific was assumed to be mainly supplied by the large-scale advection of remotely ventilated waters via the equatorial current system and meridional circulation. A recent study used an eddy-resolving simulation of a global ocean model to […]

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Tiny parasites, big impact: Species networks and carbon recycling in an oligotrophic ocean

March 12, 2024

Parasites are everywhere in the ocean. Including the microbial realm where a diverse, widespread group of protist parasites (Syndiniales) infect and kill a range of hosts, such as dinoflagellates, radiolarians, and even larger zooplankton. A complete Syndiniales infection cycle is only 2-3 days. First, the parasite is a free-living spore. Once inside a host, the […]

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Coastal DOM database – CoastDOM v1

February 28, 2024

We present the first edition of a global database (CoastDOM v1) and a resulting data manuscript, which compiles previously published and unpublished measurements of DOC, DON, and DOP in coastal waters, consisting of 62,338 (DOC), 20,356 (DON), and 13,533 (DOP) data points, respectively. CoastDOM v1 includes observations of concentrations from all continents between 1978 and […]

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Two OCB-led articles featured in AGU Eos Feb. Oceans Issue

January 26, 2024

A Closer Look-Sea at the Ocean’s Carbon Cycle AGU Eos highlights the following two articles emerging from OCB-led activities, including the OCB 2022 plenary session on the biological carbon pump and the 2022 OCB Workshop Marine Carbon Dioxide Removal: Essential Science and Problem Solving for Measurement, Reporting, and Verification. Our Evolving Understanding of Biological Carbon […]

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New synthesis of global ocean greenhouse gas fluxes

January 26, 2024

Resplandy, L., Hogikyan, A., Müller, J. D., Najjar, R. G., Bange, H. W., Bianchi, D., et al. (2024). A synthesis of global coastal ocean greenhouse gas fluxes. Global Biogeochemical Cycles, 38, e2023GB007803. https://doi.org/10.1029/2023GB007803.

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New framework reveals gaps in US ocean biodiversity protection

January 26, 2024

Gignoux-Wolfsohn et al., New framework reveals gaps in US ocean biodiversity protection, OneEarth (2023), https:// doi.org/10.1016/j.oneear.2023.12.014. (accompanying fact sheet)

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Ocean iron fertilization may amplify pressures on marine biomass with only a limited climate benefit

January 26, 2024

Amidst a heightened focus on the need for both drastic and immediate emissions reductions and carbon dioxide removal to limit warming to 1.5°C (IPCC, 2022), attention is returning to ocean iron fertilization (OIF) as a means of marine carbon dioxide removal (mCDR). First discussed in the early 1990s by John Martin, the concept posits that […]

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