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.

Illustration of ocean alkalinity enhancement monitoring showing a research vessel, autonomous vehicles, moorings, satellites, and biological sampling used to track carbon storage, seawater chemistry, and marine ecosystems.

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.

A large iceberg has broken away from the Helheim Glacier and floats among slabs of pack ice in Sermilik Fjord along the southeastern coast of Greenland. The glacier, about 3 miles wide at its mouth, has been shrinking rapidly in recent years. WHOI researchers are investigating whether changes in the fjords are contributing to the loss of ice. (Photo by Nick Cobbing © Greenpeace International)

Climate change

Scientific observation has shown that the atmosphere near the Earth's surface is warming.

Iron fertilization is a technique that would artificially add iron to the ocean's surface, triggering massive blooms of phytoplankton that could remove substantial amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Ocean warming

Increasing ocean heat is closely linked to increases in atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations, making the ocean an excellent indicator of how much Earth is warming.

carbon dioxide removal conceptual graphic

Ocean alkalinity

When alkalinity reacts with carbon dioxide in the ocean, it converts it to a form that can't readily return to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide gas.

Paleoclimatology

Understanding how climate naturally varied over thousands and millions of years teaches us how Earth's climate system works and sheds light on current, human-induced changes.

Sea level rise

Sea level rise is expected to continue for centuries and may impact human and the natural environment.

Seaweed culture

When seaweed removes carbon dioxide from seawater, it alters the balance of carbon dioxide between water and air, causing the gas to move from the atmosphere into the ocean.