The OAEPIIP project marks the first globally coordinated scientific effort to investigate the potential of Ocean Alkalinity Enhancement (OAE) — a promising carbon dioxide removal (CDR) strategy — while closely examining its effects on marine pelagic ecosystems. See behind the scenes of Portugal’s contribution to this international initiative led by the University of Tasmania, in which some of us - CHASE members - are closely involved.

As part of the Horizon EU OceanICU project, CHASE researcher Catarina Guerreiro participated in an ambitious sampling program aboard the RV Sarmiento de Gamboa. From collecting seawater and plankton to running dust fertilization experiments, the multidisciplinary effort brought together scientists and students to better understand how airborne dust and plankton dynamics shape carbon export processes in the Atlantic Ocean.

During her presentation, Catarina shared a synthesis of all the work that she led as an Early Career researcher in the course of EU- and FCT-funded projects at University of Bremen, MARE-Ulisboa and IDL, exploring marine biogeochemical responses to Saharan dust deposition in the Atlantic, in close collaboration with NIOZ, MARUM, PML, EAU, ICTA and CSIC-ICM.

His research, based on multidisciplinary data from AMT28, will enhance our understanding of calcifying phytoplankton in the less-studied South Atlantic, crucial to improve the use of coccoliths as paleoecological and paleoceanographic indicators of ocean primary productivity and biogeochemical processes.

Findings from this study enhance our understanding of the complex interactions between environmental changes and phytoplankton in the Western Antarctic Peninsula, a climatically sensitive region of the Southern Ocean, and raise important questions about the potential global consequences for carbon sequestration and Antarctic food webs in the future.

After months of preparations, the OSM2024 was finally held last February in New Orleans, gathering up to 6000 scientists, stakeholders and representatives of the multidisciplinary ocean science communities from all over the world.

In this study, we have determined the coccolith‐Sr/Ca from a one‐year time‐series sediment trap record in the western tropical North Atlantic to distinguish the biogeochemical effects of Saharan dust with respect to fertilisation and ballasting, and to gain a broader perspective on the coccolith calcite Sr/Ca in relation to the drivers of coccolith export production.

This study led by the University of Miami explores the biogeochemical impacts of mineral dust deposition on marine microbial phosphate uptake during the “Godzilla” dust storm of June 2020, when unusually high fluxes of dust traveled across the Atlantic from the Sahara Desert, reaching the Americas.

Our participation in the SOLAS Scoping Workshop in Xiamen (China) as well as the most recent expedition that we did in the tropical Atlantic, earlier this year, were mentioned in a recent article published at national newspaper Público, featuring our recent study on the effects of Saharan dust in the North Atlantic.

CHASE members will be hosting Session AI009 on “The Biogeochemistry of Air-Sea Exchange Processes”, in the framework of the general theme “Air-Sea Interactions”. Let’s all meet at the amazing New Orleans to share our latest findings on air-sea interactions! Abstract submission deadline: 13 September 2023.

This special issue, in which CHASE PI Catarina V. Guerreiro (MARE/ARNET-FCUL) has been invited as guest editor, is an outcome of the Open Science Conference on EBUS: Past, Present and Future & Second International Conference on the Humboldt Current System. The deadline for submissions is 31 January 2024!

The Okada-McIntyre Fellowship is intended for students actively seeking advanced degrees researching any aspect of modern/recent calcareous nannoplankton ecological dynamics, including seawater, sediment trap and seafloor sediment records, as well as from laboratory culture experiments dealing with any morphological, genetic, biogeochemical, and/or ecological aspects of coccolithophore species.

The main goal of her traineeship was to learn the taxonomy of extant coccolithophores living along a meridional transect crossing temperate and subtropical waters in the South Atlantic Ocean, collected in situ during the Atlantic Meridional Transect (AMT28).

Our paper investigates the role (and interplay) of large-scale oceanographic and atmospheric processes across the North Atlantic Ocean on the meridional and in-depth distribution of ecologically distinct coccolithophore species, a group of marine phytoplankton that crucially interacts with the marine carbon cycle.

In this Research Topic, we invite manuscripts that will improve existing understanding of drivers and biogeochemical impacts of atmospheric aerosols from natural (mineral dust originating from deserts, volcanic ashes, and pyrogenic aerosols from wildfires) and anthropogenic sources on marine ecosystems, both in the past, present, and future.

The Dusty Team - including researchers from MARE, NIOZ and MARUM-Bremen - is finally preparing everything to get on board of RV Pelagia, to be part of an expedition for investigating the biogeochemical effects of Saharan dust deposition in the tropical Atlantic.

Catarina V. Guerreiro and Jan-Berend Stuut present CHASE-related research on dust and biogenic particle flux variability across the tropical North Atlantic, including a region known to be influenced by the Canary Current Eastern Boundary Upwelling System (EBUS).

The teams of CHASE/PRIMUS and SINES projects join forces to study (paleo)ecological processes in the highly productive pelagic ecosystem across the coastal upwelling waters and the open ocean off Iberia. Our plan is to contribute to understand the nature of modern ecological changes in relation to the pre-industrial conditions.

For three very intense days, we had the extraordinary opportunity to meet with ministers, researchers, and stakeholders of all countries from both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, which were reunited at the National Academy of Sciences for the signing of the All-Atlantic Ocean Research & Innovation Alliance Declaration.