Newsletter | Issue 14 | October 2026

IN THIS EDITION:

OceanICU is a five-year project that seeks to gain a new understanding of the biological carbon pump and its processes to provide fundamental knowledge and tools to help policy makers, regulators and Ocean industry—fishing and mining, along with the wider blue economy—manage and understand the impact of their actions on Ocean carbon. This will ultimately lead to a better approach for addressing climate change in alignment with the EU Green Deal to reduce the net emissions of greenhouse gases to Zero by 2050.

Welcome Note

Hello Everyone,

Welcome to the Autumn of 2026. With a little over a year left we are now firmly focused in the coordination of identifying impacts and outputs and planning the project legacy. There is a huge amount of super, high quality science going on and being published, and a major challenge is how to bring all of this together via ‘big cluster outputs’ that synthesise various seemingly disparate pieces of work into clear statements of what we have achieved and how they will ‘shift the dials’. Next year, we plan to present these big stories to funding agencies and policy makers as part of the European Ocean Carbon Summit. You can read about it below as well as a highlight of recent key dissemination at the ICOS Science Conference as well as other notable news.

Richard Sanders,
OceanICU Project Coordinator
NORCE

OceanICU at ICOS Science Conference

OceanICU made a big splash in Lund, Sweden, during ICOS’s 2026 bi-annual conference. Siv Lauvset (NORCE) co-chaired a session titled ‘How Big is the Ocean C Sink’, featuring several talks from consortium members.

Neill Mackay (UNEXE) shared exciting results from research that the University of Exeter has been leading, which brings together multiple independent estimates of ocean carbon uptake to illuminate the causes of the model-data mismatch in the sink strength present in the Global Carbon Budget. This promises to be a step change in our understanding with major consequences for future activity. This result is one of the project’s key impact stories and we will be sharing more about where it will be published in future issues. The work includes contributions from Daniel Ford (UNEXE), Tobias Ehmen (UiB), Andrew Watson (UNEXE), Jamie Shutler (UNEXE) and Elena Kozlova (UNEXE).

Houda Beghoura (UiB) presented a new statistical estimate of the increase in the ocean inventory of dissolved inorganic carbon over the past three decades derived exclusively from interior ocean observations.The presentation, titled: Full-depth crossover analysis to explicitly quantify the ocean carbon sink, featured work from OceanICU colleagues Are Olsen (UiB), Siv Lauvset, Nico Lange (NORCE) and Tobias Ehmen (UiB).

International Youth Day, Filipa Afonso Shares Her Interest for Ocean Carbon

This annual United Nations observance provides a platform to promote dialogue, strengthen partnerships, and showcase youth-led initiatives that contribute to more inclusive, peaceful and sustainable societies. To mark the occasion of International Youth Day, OceanICU ECR colleague Filipa Afonso (MI) shared why she thinks young people should care about ocean carbon.

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A sequential gated research framework for addressing potential impacts of marine carbon dioxide removal on fisheries, aquaculture, and Indigenous communities

Evaluating the footprint of mCDR requires identifying and understanding positive and negative impacts beyond carbon dioxide removal. This recently published paper describes a multi-stage research framework for mCDR project developers to assess these interdisciplinary impacts, specifically in relation to marine ecosystems, fisheries and aquaculture. It features work from Helen Findlay (PML) and Fiona Culhane (MI) among an interdisciplinary team of academic and government scientists, non-governmental organisations, fisheries and Indigenous community members.

Read the paper

“Wildlife and Climate” Scientific Consensus on the Roles of Wild Animals in the Global Carbon Cycle and Natural Climate Solutions

OceanICU’s Fabio Berzaghi (WMU) is among 13 authors who contributed towards a new paper exploring the ways that wild animals drive ecosystem processes that can regulate carbon storage and greenhouse gas flux. The paper provides insights in support of policymakers working to bridge the gap between scientific understanding and climate policy in order to unlock the full potential of wildlife to support climate mitigation, resilience, and adaptation.

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The OceanICU Youth Competition Is Open for Applications!

As part of activities to connect the project with wider society, OceanICU has launched an online Youth Competition. The competition invites young people (age 14-30 years old) to discover the work carried out in the project and to explain what they have learned in a creative science outreach material. The deadline for application is 17 February 2027 at 18:00 CET. Laureates’ work will be showcased online in a virtual gallery. Help us get the word out by sharing the link below with your networks and young people who may be interested in the Youth Competition.

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OceanICU at UNFCCC COP31

We are gearing up to engage at COP31. Plans are in the works for in-person engagement and participation in a Virtual Ocean Pavilion webinar. COP31 takes place on 9-20th of November 2026. Please look out for more information on the website and via social media for OceanICU activity. For more information on the event, visit the COP31 website and see how the ocean fits into the UNFCCC.

European Ocean Carbon Summit

The European Ocean Carbon Summit has had its first kick off meeting. This campaign is bringing together 10 Horizon Europe projects active in the ocean carbon space to address fundamental issues, such as identifying what the collective research investment has led to, understanding what we have learned from our investigations, outlining what the next steps should be, and suggesting future funding calls. This activity will culminate in a joint report which will be delivered at an event in May 2027. OceanICU is among the following partners: BIOGEOSEA / C-BLUES / GEORGE / JOHN / MAR-CO2 / OAeSIS / SAFESEA / SEAO2-CDR / TRICUSO.

More info

GLODAPv3: What It Is, What's New, What It Means for You

The latest version of the Global Ocean Data Analysis Project will be unpacked in a webinar on the 12th of November (15:00 / subject to change). Whether you are new to GLODAP or have worked with previous versions, this webinar will provide a brief overview of GLODAP and its evolution from Version 2, before taking a closer look at what has changed in Version 3 and the implications for using the dataset in ocean carbon research. Nico Lange (NORCE), Matthew Humphreys (NIOZ), and Ryan Woosley (MIT) will present, with a Q&A following.

Registration

Challenger Society for Marine Science Conference

Eloïse Savineau (UNEXE) and Ben Cala (HWU) presented their OceanICU work in Bangor, North Wales during the biennial Challenger Society Conference. One of the UK’s largest gatherings of marine scientists, the conference provides an opportunity for networking as well as giving early career scientists the opportunity to present their work in a friendly environment.