Why is carbon important to our climate?
Carbon has a major influence on our climate and is a critical building block for life. The continuing increase of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere from human activities is warming the planet, leading to impacts from sea level rise to ocean acidification.
The ocean helps regulate atmospheric CO₂. Global warming would be substantially worse without the ocean, which has absorbed over a quarter of all the extra CO₂ we've added to the atmosphere. Ocean circulation then transports this carbon away from the surface, trapping it at depth.
The Ocean's Role
Understanding what controls the transfer of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to the ocean is vital. It allows us to better understand historical climate and to improve predictions of future climate. These are both vital for better planning and mitigating the potential impacts of effects such as ocean acidification and sea-level rise.
The necessity of carbon for organisms to grow, whether they are bacteria or whales, means that life in the ocean provides an extra natural reservoir of carbon. Tiny plants called phytoplankton use carbon dioxide in seawater to reproduce. This carbon then passes through the food web, in some cases taking hundreds of years to reappear as dissolved carbon dioxide and re-engage with the atmosphere.
Although there is currently no evidence that the storage of carbon by marine life is helping reduce anthropogenic carbon in the atmosphere, there is evidence that it can influence climate significantly on longer time scales.
With questions about the ocean's capacity to continue absorbing CO₂ from the atmosphere, some have considered directly manipulating the ocean's ecosystems and surface chemistry to address global warming. This approach is called marine carbon dioxide removal (mCDR).
Discover more about mCDR
People
Our scientists, engineers, and researchers are driven by a mission to deepen understanding of ocean health amid a changing climate. Our ocean carbon science helps to protect the ocean and tackle the pressing challenges of our time.
Podcasts
NOC’s award-winning podcast, Into the Blue, takes listeners on a journey to discover some of the biggest topics and challenges the ocean faces today and learn from some of the leaders in ocean research on how they plan to overcome them.
Impacts
Carbon datasets that NOC routinely generates and collects directly contribute to annual international estimates of the Global Carbon Budget and assessments of the impacts of ocean acidification on the UK's coastal waters.
Professor Stephanie Henson was a lead author on the last IPCC (AR6) report on the physical science basis for climate change, lending her expertise on the role of marine life in the global carbon cycle.
NOC has developed the technology to detect the escape of carbon dioxide from undersea reservoirs, which have been proposed as a means of reducing atmospheric concentrations.
NOC recently organised and hosted the WEPAL/QUASIMEME workshop on Quality Assurance for Ocean Acidification Monitoring in March 2025. This brought together national, European, and international experts in marine carbon research to share best practice and develop new processes to ensure the highest quality datasets are being produced.
How has NOC contributed to policy development?
NOC contributed to the UK government's independent review into Greenhouse Gas Removals by:
- Providing oral evidence to the review committee in Whitehall.
- Participating in a multi-stakeholder roundtable event alongside commercial entities, regulators, and academics.
- Submitting written evidence on mCDR approaches.
Publications
One of the impacts and outputs of our Ocean Carbon research are the publications it produces and which emphasis the importance and relevance of our science.
NOC Arctic Carbon Research Expedition Report No 87. 2025 MY Akula: Greenland fjords. 15th to 29th August 2025.
Garcia-Martin, Elena 
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4807-3287; Hubot, Nathan.
2025
NOC Arctic Carbon Research Expedition Report No 87. 2025 MY Akula: Greenland fjords. 15th to 29th August 2025.
Southampton, National Oceanography Centre.
(National Oceanography Centre Research Expedition Report, 87)
2025
Monograph
Suitability analysis and revised strategies for marine environmental carbon capture and storage (CCS) monitoring
Lichtschlag, Anna ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8281-2165; Pearce, Christopher R. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4382-2341; Suominen, Mikael; Blackford, Jerry; Borisov, Sergey M.; Bull, Jonathan M.; de Beer, Dirk; Dean, Marcella; Esposito, Mario; Flohr, Anita ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5018-5379; Gros, Jonas; Haeckel, Matthias; Huvenne, Veerle A.I. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7135-6360; James, Rachael H.; Koopmans, Dirk; Linke, Peter; Mowlem, Matthew; Omar, Abdirahman M.; Schaap, Allison ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5391-0516; Schmidt, Mark; Sommer, Stefan; Strong, James ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8603-097X; Connelly, Douglas P..
2021
Suitability analysis and revised strategies for marine environmental carbon capture and storage (CCS) monitoring.
International Journal of Greenhouse Gas Control, 112, 103510.
10.1016/j.ijggc.2021.103510
2021
Article
Blue carbon management integrating socioeconomic and environmental interconnectivity in Southeast Asia: an urgent climate priority
Becker, Amani; Bercovici, Sarah K.; Choo, Jenny; Fakhrurrozi, Fakhrurrozi; Fong, Annabelle; Fowell, Sara E. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9835-4725; Hossain, Emmy; Hussein, Muhammad Ali Syed; Jamilah, Maryam; Mujahid, Aazani; Müller, Moritz; Ooi, Jillian Lean Sim; Quiros, T. E. Angela L.; Richard, Florina; Saleh, Ejria; Chee, Su Yin; Then, Amy Yee-Hui; Ticman, Kristina; Wee, Julia Lih Suan; Wong, Changi; Affendi, Yang Amri; Yap, Tzuen Kiat; Yoshikai, Masaya; Yusri, Safran; Evans, Claire ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0569-7057.
2025
Blue carbon management integrating socioeconomic and environmental interconnectivity in Southeast Asia: an urgent climate priority.
Frontiers in Marine Science, 12.
10.3389/fmars.2025.1642387
2025
Article