Climate & weather

The ocean plays a central role in global climate and regional weather patterns, including droughts, rainstorms, and hurricanes.

mooring in rough seas — Offshore conditions can be brutal for moorings that remain in the water for six-month deployments. The new location for the OOI’s Coastal Pioneer Array is designed to withstand treacherous conditions, including extreme storms. (Credit: ©Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)

The ocean plays a central role in global climate and regional weather patterns.

Explore how the ocean regulates climate by absorbing carbon, the ways a warming ocean impacts the intensity of storms and the height of the sea, and how scientists study the ocean’s climate history.

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Abrupt climate change

Earth's changing climate is raising concerns that it could respond in abrupt and unexpected ways, making it difficult for human society to adapt.

Ocean-based climate solutions

Ocean-based, clean energy technologies hold great potential for ocean-based climate solutions, such as blue carbon, biofuels, and carbon dioxide removal systems.

The worlds river systems sequester atmospheric carbon dioxide by transporting decaying organic material from land to the ocean. Although river transport of carbon to the ocean is not large enough to bail humans out of our global warming problem, knowing how much carbon rivers transport is important part of understanding the global carbon cycle that regulates Earth's climate. Scientists from WHOI recently calculated the first direct estimate of how much and in what form organic carbon is exported to the ocean by rivers. (Illustration by Eric S. Taylor, WHOI Creative © Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)

Coastal restoration & blue carbon

Blue carbon refers to atmospheric carbon captured and stored by the ocean, which mitigates the effects of climate change by storing carbon for long periods of time.