• Guides atmosphere-ocean monitoring, to carry out process studies, and to develop and implement earth-system models. In order to improve predictions of atmospheric and oceanic properties that have societal and environmental importance, over time scales from weeks to multiple decades.

• Address interactions at interfaces of the solid earth and aquatic systems. Physical and chemical interactions throughout the global ocean are discovered, identified, and characterized to document how these interactions impact biogeochemical cycles, aquatic-habitat creation and maintenance, ocean productivity, biogeochemical cycles, seafloor and coastal morphology, and coastal inundation.

• Understanding and predicting changes in climate and climate-induced changes in ocean biology, through understanding the ocean’s role in the uptake of anthropogenic CO2 and the response of the ocean’s physical and biological carbon pumps.

• This multidisciplinary theme is motivated by the need to measure, understand, and predict the short and long-term fate of marine ecosystems, and to improve ecosystem-based management for present and future generations.

Ocean and Coastal Observations

• Develops novel technologies and sampling approaches to understand transport and storage of ocean heat, the subduction and storage of greenhouse gases, and subsequent impacts on the coastal ocean. Fluxes of momentum, heat, and moisture connect the ocean and atmosphere influencing multiscale processes from the global hydrological cycle to extreme weather events and teleconnections that span the tropics to the poles.

• Efforts to understand climate, manage marine ecosystems, and share knowledge and information rely on collection, dissemination, and analysis of data.

• Development of sustainable marine aquaculture to promote the culture of shellfish, finfish, and macroalgae. Aquaculture is defined to include hatchery production (where individuals are born in captivity and outplanted) and farming (where individuals are grown in captivity throughout their lifetimes). Aquaculture also continues to play a critical role in ecosystem conservation and restoration efforts.

• Human dimensions in marine systems aim to support adaptations of coastal communities to climate-related changes. Vulnerability assessment – with elements of sensitivity, exposure, and adaptive capacity – provides a framework to examine adaptation strategies.

• Understand the physical, chemical, biological, and ecological systems in the Antarctic, Arctic, and Alaskan regions. Since this is a geographic theme, it incorporates components of all other research themes within the CICOES research portfolio: climate, earth system, ecosystems, and technology development.