Current projects are listed at noc.ac.uk/projects

Programme and Project websites hosted here:

  • ACCORD Addressing Challenges of Coastal Communities through Ocean Research for Developing Economies (ACCORD) will provide our international partners in eight countries with the scientific evidence and capability needed to ensure the sustainable growth, and resilience to shocks, of their ocean economies (so-called ‘Blue Economies’).
  • ANCODE Applying nature-based coastal defence to the world’s largest urban area – from science to practice (ANCODE) aims to better understand the potential for re-introducing nature-based coastal defences, namely mangroves and oyster reefs.
     
  • BLUEcoast Physical and biological dynamic coastal processes and their role in coastal recovery (BLUEcoast) aims to inform coastal management by reducing uncertainties in the prediction of medium-term (years) and long-term (decadal and longer) regional sediment budgets, morphological change and how the coast recovers after sequences of storms.
     
  • CLASS CLASS will deliver the knowledge and understanding of the Atlantic Ocean system that society needs to make evidence-based decisions regarding ocean management.
  • CME Programme Commonwealth Marine Economies (CME) Programme will help Commonwealth Small Island Developing States (SIDS) make the most of their natural maritime advantages, to enable sustainable economic growth and alleviate poverty.
  • CodeMAP Complex Deep-sea Environments: Mapping habitat heterogeneity As Proxy for biodiversity (CODEMAP) searches for alternative methods to quantify deep-sea biodiversity.
  • COMICS Controls over Ocean Mesopelagic Interior Carbon Storage (COMICS) is a four-year collaborative research project that aims to quantify the flow of carbon in the ocean’s ‘twilight’ zone in order to more accurately model global climate change.
  • Co-Opt Resilient Coasts: Optimising Co-Benefit Solutions (Co-Opt) will deliver a new integrated and interdisciplinary system-based framework that will provide the evidence towards a transition from hard ‘grey’ defences to softer ‘green’ solutions.
  • C-RISE Coastal Risk Information Service (C-­RISe) will work with local partners to deliver a Coastal Risk Information service to South Africa, Mozambique and Madagascar, providing satellite-­derived information about sea level, wind and waves to support coastal vulnerability assessment and hazard management efforts.
     
  • DOO Deep-Ocean Observatories.
  • Drake-Passage Drake Passage has been the most comprehensively observed part of the Southern Ocean. It provides the link between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, and it constricts the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) to a narrow geographical region, making this the best place to measure the ACC’s properties.
     
  • The Extended Ellett Line The Extended Ellett Line is a project to measure and understand the ocean to the west of the UK. We are looking at how and why the currents, temperature and salinity have changed over the past few decades.
     
  • FLAME Future Coastal Ocean Climates (FLAME) is a UN Ocean Decade Action within the CoastPredict Programme. It acts as an international coordinator and focal point for understanding the impacts of future climate change in the global coastal ocean.
     
  • GASRIP Geomechanical Assessment of CO2 Storage Reservoir Integrity Post-closure.
  • GLOSAT Global Surface Air Temperature (GLOSAT) is estimating how the global climate has changed over the industrial era.
  • GOCART Gauging ocean Organic Carbon fluxes using Autonomous Robotic Technologies.
  • Greenhouse Gases in the Earth System Educational outreach describing the role of key greenhouse gases in society and the Earth system, and the processes that govern their dynamics in the atmosphere, ocean and biosphere.
     
  • HOSTACE Historical Ocean Surface Temperatures: Accuracy, Characterisation and Evaluation (HOSTACE) will improve our understanding of how the dramatic change in technology we have seen over the observational record has affected the consistency of the measured SSTs.
     
  • INSPIRE Interdisciplinary Southampton Partnership for Investigators Researching the Environment.
     
  • JETZON Joint Exploration of the Twilight Zone Ocean Network (JETZON) is intended to act as an international coordinator and focal point for Twilight Zone studies.
  • Jmodels The Jmodel suite consists of several models of different aspects of the Earth System.
     
  • Landslide-Tsunami Consortium The consortium will run for four years from October 2012 and involves sea and land-based fieldwork, modelling studies and societal cost estimates.
  • LOCATE Land Ocean Carbon Transfer (LOCATE) will establish how much soil carbon is getting into rivers and estuaries.
     
  • MARMOT The Marine Model Optimization Testbed (MARMOT) is an advanced software tool for the analysis and assessment of plankton ecosystem models.
  • MASSMO Marine Autonomous Systems in Support of Marine Observations (MASSMO) field trials will provide a valuable insight into what happens at the shelf and its marine ecosystem, gather environmental data, plus feed back vital information on how the different USVs perform in preparation for future scientific applications.
  • Mideast Coral Reef Society Initiative The Mideast Coral Reef Society (MCRS) is an association of researchers and members of governmental, non-governmental, academic, industry and private sector organisations with an interest in a broad range of aspects of Middle Eastern reefs.
  • MerMEED Mechanisms responsible for Mesoscale Eddy Energy Dissipation (MerMEED) investigates the processes responsible for the widespread dissipation of oceanic mesoscale eddies at western boundaries.
  • MESO-CLIP MESoscale Ocean eddies and CLImate Predictability (MESO-CLIP) – mesoscale ocean eddies are ubiquitous swirls of water in the world oceans. In the framework of MESO-CLIP we will investigate how strongly and on what timescales these eddies affect the variability and predictability of the ocean and of the atmosphere.
     
  • OCEANIDS to develop enhanced capability for the UK marine science community, particularly in unexplored and technologically challenging under-ice and deep-ocean environments.
  • OMAN Drilling Project A multi-national collaboration to explore ancient seafloor in the deserts of Oman.
  • OSRIS Ocean Satellite Research Impact Study (OSRIS) identifies NERC strategic research of current or potential benefit to the Ministry of Defence (MoD) and the Royal Navy by carrying out a comprehensive review of past and current NERC activities involving satellite technologies, and, in discussion with the MoD to assess their relevance to MoD activities.
     
  • PAP The Porcupine Abyssal Plain Sustained Observatory (PAP-SO) is a sustained, multidisciplinary observatory in the North Atlantic coordinated by the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton.
     
  • ReSOW UK The Restoration of Seagrass for Ocean Wealth (ReSOW UK) project will provide evidence and strategic vision for ecological renewal, underpinned by excellent science.
     
  • Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity + Surface Ocean Salinity SMOS+SOS is a project funded under the ESA STSE (Support to Science Element) programme to demonstrate the performance and scientific value of SMOS Sea Surface Salinity (SSS) products through five well-defined case studies (CS).
  • SNOMS Swire NOCS Ocean Monitoring System (SNOMS) is an innovative programme designed to quantify key ocean processes. It is a partnership between Swire and the NOC Southampton.
  • SOARC Southern Ocean Argo Regional Centre (SOARC) is an international collaboration of partner institutions with responsibility for validating all float data in the Southern Ocean through rigorous scrutiny, deriving Argo data products and helping to coordinate development of the Argo programme in the Southern Ocean.
  • Socio-Oceanography Socio-Oceanography is a cross-cutting theme, aiming to promote integrated marine research inclusive of strong social science that is required for the delivery of sustainable ocean futures.
  • STEMM-CCS Strategies for Environmental Monitoring of Marine Carbon Capture and Storage.
     
  • TERIFIC Targeted Experiment to Reconcile Increased Freshwater with Increased Convection (TERIFIC) The ocean Meridional Overturning Circulation (MOC) is responsible for poleward heat transport, and deep storage of heat and carbon. Climate models generally predict that a slowdown of the MOC will occur this century, with dramatic regional and global climate changes. Yet in 2015, convection returned, and was anomalously strong.
  • TICTOC Transient tracer-based Investigation of Circulation and Thermal Ocean Change (TICTOC) studies regional ocean heat content change and sea level rise using observations made from research ships and computer models of the ocean to understand where the ocean takes up heat from the atmosphere and how ocean currents transport and redistribute that heat.
     
  • UK-ICOS UK-Integrated Carbon Observation System (UK-ICOS) part of the Integrated Carbon Observation System (ICOS) is a European Research Infrastructure identified as part of the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures process.
  • UK-IOC The Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission promotes international cooperation and coordination in research, services and capacity-building across the marine environment.
  • UK-OSNAP Overturning in the Subpolar North Atlantic Programme is improving understanding of the circulation and fluxes of the North Atlantic Subpolar Gyre.
  • UNCLOS-UK United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) – the Marine Geoscience Group at the NOC led and provided technical advice to the UK Government for all four UK claims under Article 76; in respect of the Celtic Shelf, Hatton-Rockall area, Ascension Island, and the Falkland Islands and South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands.
  • Underwater Sound Forum The Underwater Sound Forum (USF) is a sub-group of the UK Government’s Marine Science Co-ordination Committee. The Forum is made up of representatives of the key stakeholders within the UK marine and maritime community (Government, academic, NGO and industry) that have an interest in how the UK manages the issue of underwater sound in the science, technology, policy and legal areas.
     
  • WAGES The aim of Waves, Aerosols and Gas Exchange Study (WAGES), a NERC-funded project, was to make direct measurement of the turbulent air-sea fluxes of CO2, sea-spray aerosol, sensible and latent heat and momentum in order to improve the parameterisation of these fluxes in terms of mean meteorological and sea-state variables.