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.
  • AtlantiS Atlantic Climate and Environment Strategic Science – AtlantiS is a five year programme (2024–2029) that delivers the continuation and evolution of the UK’s strategic ocean observing and ocean prediction programme.
     
  • BIO-Carbon Biological Influence on Future Ocean Storage of Carbon – this programme will deliver the new understanding of the role of marine life that is needed to make robust predictions of future ocean carbon storage.
     
  • CHAMFER UK Coastal Hazards, Multi-hazard Controls on Flooding and Erosion – delivering new knowledge and understanding; provide tools to analyse the efficacy of future ‘natural solutions’; work with government departments, public sector organisations, and industry users to inform and support coastal adaptation and resilience-building options.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • C-Streams The Gulf Stream control of the North Atlantic carbon sink – The joint UK-US C-Streams project will shed new light on the role of the Gulf Stream and North Atlantic in the global carbon cycle.
     
  • Ellett Array Ellett Array 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.
  • EXPAND “will nitrogEn fiXation offset nitrogen dePletion in expAnding oceaN Deserts?” aims to provide a mechanistic and quantitative understanding of how nitrogen fixation responds to the seasonal expansion of ocean gyres and how this affects primary productivity and export. EXPAND will inform the parameterisation of nitrogen fixation in models and enhance predictions of future biological productivity.
     
  • 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.
     
  • GLOSAT Global Surface Air Temperature (GLOSAT) is estimating how the global climate has changed over the industrial era.
     
  • 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.
     
  • LOCATE Land Ocean Carbon Transfer (LOCATE) will establish how much soil carbon is getting into rivers and estuaries.
     
  • MEDUSA Model of Ecosystem Dynamics, nutrient Utilisation, Sequestration and Acidification – an ‘intermediate complexity’ model of the plankton ecosystem founded on the oceanic nitrogen cycle. It addresses major feedbacks between ocean biogeochemical cycles and anthropogenic drivers such as climate change and ocean acidification and operates within the framework of the Nucleus for European Modelling of the Ocean (NEMO) physical model.
     
  • Ocean Wind Waves is a Special Interest Group (SIG) of the Challenger Society for Marine Science focused on observing, modelling and forecasting ocean surface waves. It promotes research in ocean surface waves and of their interactions with oceanographic, atmospheric and climatic processes; provides a forum for cross-disciplinary exchange of information; encourages early-career researchers in this field by providing an informal platform for presentations and interactions.
     
  • 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.
     
  • SBE Platform Sustainable Blue Economies Technical Assistance Platform – partnering with Small Island Developing States to co-develop the science, knowledge, tools and capability for equitable, climate resilient, sustainable blue economies.
  • SEAO2-CDR Strategies for the Evaluation and Assessment of Ocean based Carbon Dioxide Removal – expanding our understanding of the potential to use ocean-based marine Carbon Dioxide Removal (mCDR) approaches by integrating scientific, social, legal and commercial knowledge we are developing the tools, mechanisms and guidelines required to ensure that potential mCDR techniques can be developed and assessed in a responsible and transparent manner.
  • SEASTAR proposes to measure two-dimensional vector fields of total surface current vectors and ocean surface vector winds. It is the first mission to offer the sensitivity, fine resolution, high accuracy, wide swath and flexible sampling needed to observe and characterise these small-scale phenomena, and also quantify fast-evolving processes on daily to multi-annual scales, across different ocean conditions and latitudes, over all coastal and shelf seas, and in Marginal Ice Zones.
  • SMARTEX Seabed Mining and Resilience to Experimental Impact – a UK Natural Environment Research Council project aiming to provide the critical scientific understanding of ecosystems and biodiversity associated with polymetallic nodules in a 6 million km2 region of the central Pacific ocean.
  • 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.
  • SOLSTICE-WIO Sustainable Oceans, Livelihoods and food Security Through Increased Capacity in Ecosystem research in the Western Indian Ocean was a four-year collaborative project funded by the UK Global Challenges Research Fund. Launched in October 2017, it brought together recent advances in marine technologies, local knowledge and research expertise to address challenges facing the Western Indian Ocean region in a cost-effective way via state-of-the-art technology transfer, collaborative environmental and socio-economic research and hands-on training.
  • STEMM-CCS Strategies for Environmental Monitoring of Marine Carbon Capture and Storage.
     
  • 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.
  • 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.
     
  • VALMAS Valuing Marine Artificial Structures – will empower decision-makers with the evidence-based tools to sustainably manage, operate, and decommission MAS: balancing multiple interconnected environmental, economic, and societal priorities.