Climate is changing due to human emissions of carbon to the atmosphere. But not all the carbon emitted remains there - in fact, over the industrial era, the ocean has absorbed excess carbon equivalent to 40% of all human fossil fuel emissions. Understanding the ocean carbon sink and the global carbon cycle is critical to understanding and predicting future climate change.
The McKinley Ocean Carbon Research Group studies how ocean physical and biogeochemical processes impact large-scale carbon cycling and primary productivity. These studies encompass climate and ocean physics, biogeochemistry and ecology. Our research tools include numerical models, oceanographic datasets, and machine learning. Current projects include:
- Building and applying ocean and Earth System models to understand carbon and oxygen processes
- Developing explainable artificial intelligence methods to pinpoint drivers of Earth System Model biases
- Using model testbeds to address uncertainties and data gaps in machine learning products for air-sea CO2 fluxes, both globally and at the scale of potential marine carbon dioxide removal (mCDR) projects
- Planning observing for autonomous vehicles in the Southern Ocean to fill critical gaps in observing the ocean carbon sink: COCO2
- Regularly updating and disseminating state-of-the-art ocean carbon products for application in science and policy
Here’s the group in September 2026 when we visited the Lovenduski Group at University of Colorado Boulder and took a short hike at NCAR’s Mesa Lab
Abby Shaum, Paridhi Rustogi, Ce Bian, Galen McKinley Amanda Fay, Anna Chen, Thea Hatlen Heimdal (not pictured: Rishika Mamidibathula and Katie Pierson)
Ocean Carbon Resources
Please see our LDEO Ocean Carbon site to download data products and code.
In 2024, we developed this data story on the ocean carbon sink. Check out the cool animations created by CarbonPlan.
Previous Work
Please see our Publications for our prior work in these and other areas.