Projects
Current Projects
Oxygen and Biogeochemical Dynamics Along the West African Margin: Processes and Consequences (WAM)
PI: S. Fawcett Co-PIs: S.-A. Nicholson, L. Resplandy, D. Sigman WAM is a Schmidt Sciences funded project, which falls under Schmidt Science’s new initiative, the Ocean Biogeochemistry Virtual Institute (OBVI). The West African ocean margin is a highly productive zone, critical for supporting key fisheries and marine diversity. It is also characterised by extensive oxygen-poor regions making it particularly susceptible to future environmental changes such as deoxygenation, which could have major socio-economic consequences for several West African countries.
Yet, the future of ocean oxygenation and productivity is highly uncertain, in part because of the array of processes involved, ranging from global-scale atmospheric circulation to fine-scale (1–10 km) complex coastal currents. WAM aims to determine the inter-related controls on oxygen and productivity along the West African margin, from the tip of South Africa to the equator, and to identify implications for natural resources.
This margin hosts several socioeconomically important ecosystems characterized by different oxygen conditions and levels of productivity. The project seeks to identify the organizing principles underlying the margin’s oxygen dynamics in order to develop predictive capacity for the region, with regard to oxygen and productivity and to the biogeochemical and ecosystem-level implications of changes in these parameters.
Funding: Schmidt Sciences, 2024–2029
Southern Ocean Carbon–Heat Nexus: Mixed-Layer Processes & Feedbacks for Improved Climate Projections
PI: S.-A. Nicholsom Co-PIs: P Monteiro, S. Hamnca
The contemporary Southern Ocean regulates global climate by slowing down rates of anthropogenic warming through its globally disproportionate role in the uptake of excess heat and CO₂ emissions (‘negative feedback’). Simultaneously, the Southern Ocean is warming, which hampers its ability to continue to absorb CO₂ (‘positive feedback’). The role of the ocean in the uptake of heat and CO₂ and these related feedbacks is termed the ocean carbon–heat nexus.
Currently, we do not adequately understand the processes behind this nexus, but it is critical for predicting future climate and how the Southern Ocean’s role as a buffer for climate change will evolve regionally and globally with different emission scenarios.
The challenge lies in understanding, observing, and modelling the multiple cross-scale (e.g. 1 mm – 100 km) processes acting across the atmosphere-ocean and ocean mixed-layer interfaces that dictate the ocean’s ability to take up excess heat and CO₂.
This proposal uses high-resolution observations, data-based reconstructions and models, to closely examine CO₂ and heat flux together with a focus on sub-grid scale processes (not resolved in climate models).
Objectives:
- Examine the drivers of ocean heat and CO₂ fluxes and their feedbacks.
- Determine the importance of sub-grid scale processes toward understanding interannual to decadal variability and feedbacks of CO₂ and heat flux in the Southern Ocean.
Overall, this project aims to bring the study of heat and carbon together to improve our understanding and projection of carbon-climate feedbacks.
Funding: National Research Foundation – South African National Antarctic Programme, 2024–2027
South African Integrated Carbon - Climate Observatory
PI: P. Monteiro
This project is designed to deliver three key dimensions of regional and global impact across both carbon-climate science and climate policy:
Reducing Uncertainty in the Regional Carbon Budget We aim to significantly reduce current uncertainties—by an order of magnitude—in the annual mean carbon budget of the South African Coastal Ocean System. Combined with terrestrial data, this will enable a more precise estimate of South Africa’s regional carbon sink. These improved constraints can directly inform the Global Carbon Budget, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and South Africa’s Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement.
Supporting Climate Governance and Marine Carbon Dioxide Removal (mCDR) By reducing uncertainties in the trends and variability of carbon fluxes, this project will provide the scientific foundation and carbon constraints needed to develop regionally appropriate governance frameworks. These frameworks will assess the feasibility and effectiveness of marine Carbon Dioxide Removal (mCDR) strategies.
Informing Coastal Ecosystem Management and Adaptation Policies We aim to deliver a high-confidence, multi-decadal reconstruction of ocean acidification trends and variability in the South African coastal ocean. This information is critical for managing biodiversity and supporting aquaculture, particularly for vulnerable species like corals, non-coral calcifiers, and shellfish. The results will support the development of targeted adaptation policies to mitigate the effects of declining ocean pH on both ecosystems and coastal industries.
Funding: National Research Foundation – Earth Systems Science Research Programme, 2025–2028
Past Projects
Contemporary and Future Drivers of CO₂ and Heat in the Southern Ocean
PI: S.-A. Nicholson
Co-PIs: P.M.S. Monteiro, S. Swart
The contemporary Southern Ocean mitigates the effects of anthropogenic climate change through its disproportional uptake of carbon and heat. However, it is not well understood how this role will evolve under different emission and mitigation scenarios. The Southern Ocean also remains the largest source of global ocean uncertainty in global estimates of CO₂ and heat fluxes.
We propose that a significant part of the challenge lies in the lack of research on CO₂ and heat together to better understand the feedback and the mechanisms that drive those feedbacks.
This project examines the changing role of the Southern Ocean in global climate by studying CO₂ and heat in an integrated way using a 10-year high-resolution glider dataset (2012–2022 SOSCEx experiments), including two new experiments, and an eddy-resolving model (BIOPERIANT12).
Expected Outcomes:
- Improved observational constraints for seasonal-interannual variability of CO₂ and heat fluxes.
- Understanding of how storms and fine-scale dynamics influence variability.
- Identification of mechanisms behind the decadal anomaly in CO₂ fluxes at the end of the 20th century.
Funding: National Research Foundation – South African National Antarctic Programme, 2020–2023
Southern Ocean Carbon and Heat Impact on Climate (SO-CHIC)
PI: J.B. Sallee
SO-CHIC aims to understand and quantify variability of heat and carbon budgets in the Southern Ocean by investigating the key processes controlling exchanges between the atmosphere, ocean, and sea ice, using both observational and modelling approaches.
Focusing on the Atlantic sector of the Southern Ocean, SO-CHIC leverages European expertise, infrastructure, and long-term observation networks. It also investigates the reappearance of the Atlantic Sector Weddell Polynya and its impact on heat and carbon cycles.
Funding: European Union Horizon 2020, 2019–2024
The Ocean Beneath Antarctic Sea-Ice: Observing New Scales to Address a Global Challenge
PIs:
- Sweden: S. Swart
- South Africa: S. Thomalla & S. Nicholson
The Antarctic sea-ice covered ocean is one of the least observed systems on Earth. It represents a major gap in global ocean-climate research. This Swedish–South African partnership uses autonomous ocean gliders in the Antarctic marginal ice zone (MIZ) to explore this critical region, leveraging recent technological advances and field access.
Funding: STINT (Sweden) & National Research Foundation (South Africa), 2019–2021
The Role of Storms in Shaping Upper Ocean Physics and Primary Production in the Southern Ocean
PI: S.-A. Nicholson
Co-PIs: P.M.S. Monteiro, S. Swart
Southern Ocean storms pass over high-eddy kinetic energy environments (eddies and fronts), which may impact the upper ocean where phytoplankton thrive. However, the nature of these impacts is not well understood.
This project combines autonomous ocean robots and numerical models to observe how storm-driven wind forcing influences upper ocean mixing and phytoplankton growth. It also explores how storm characteristics might affect annual primary production in the Southern Ocean.
Funding: National Research Foundation – South African National Antarctic Programme, 2017–2020