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24-26 November 2025 Online | 02-03 December 2025 in-person at IOCS Darmstadt (DE)

2nd Ocean Carbon from Space workshop

Background

Quantifying the ocean carbon budget and its response to anthropogenic forcing is a major goal in climate research. The ocean has absorbed about a quarter of anthropogenic CO₂ emissions while the proportion of carbon uptake has increased relative to emissions. However, our understanding of ocean carbon pools, processes that modulate them, and interactions with land and atmosphere limits our ability to predict future changes. A more integrated, holistic approach – supported by robust monitoring systems – is essential, and satellite observations can play a vital role in closing these knowledge gaps.

The 2nd Ocean Carbon from Space workshop will support progress towards an integrated approach for characterising the ocean carbon cycle using satellite observations and will advance our understanding of its variability across space and time. Outcomes will provide insight into how satellite observations can inform ocean carbon assessments in the Earth System in a climate context, support the evaluation and improvement of climate models, and provide advice and guidance to high-level policy activities.

This workshop is organised in the frame of the ESA SCOPE Project, for further information, please visit the website HERE

Objectives

The main objective of the workshop is to bring together the scientific community to address key gaps, challenges, and opportunities in ocean carbon research. The workshop will support progress towards an integrated approach for characterising the ocean carbon cycle using field and satellite observations as well as ecosystem models and will look towards advancing our understanding of its variability across space and time.

Workshop structure

The workshop consists of two components:

  1. Online workshop from 24-26 November 2025, consisting of keynote presentations, oral presentations and breakout poster and discussion sessions, with the intention to cover a wide range of topics related to ocean carbon cycle research.
  2. In-person sessions at the International Ocean Colour Science Meeting from 2 – 3 December 2025 in Darmstadt, Germany, including a half-day plenary session and a 2.5-hour breakout session, focused on actionable recommendations for the international research community and space agencies.

Participants can choose to join the online or in-person sessions, or both.

Themes / Sessions

For the online component of the workshop, we invite submission of abstracts contributing to the following themes:

  • Improving observations through algorithm development and validation, including uncertainty estimation and climate-quality datasets
  • Understanding the physical and biological processes that underpin the ocean carbon cycle
  • Addressing the impact of climate change on the ocean carbon cycle, including extreme events
  • Closing the ocean and global carbon budget
  • Informing climate mitigation and adaptation strategies, including the global stocktake

These themes cover a wide range of topics in ocean carbon research, and are not limited to the open ocean only, i.e., we welcome contributions related to blue and coastal carbon as well as those related to air-sea and land-sea interactions.

The results from the online workshop feed into the in-person sessions at IOCS, where we look for community consensus to recommend actions across the broader research community and different space agencies.  

Abstracts

The Abstract submission interface is now open, we invite you to submit your contribution HERE

The abstract submissions are only intended for the online workshop.

Note: Abstract length should be at least 200 words and maximum 300 words (one A4 page, single space normally contains 400-500 words).
Information about the co-authors (name, lastname, affiliation, contact Email) is required at the moment of the submission.

Schedule and Deadlines

Abstract submission opening (online workshop)30 May 2025
Abstract submission closure (online workshop)15 September 2025
Notification of acceptance (online workshop)15 October 2025
Issue of Preliminary Programme15 October 2025
Issue of Final Programme30 October 2025
Online Workshop24–26 November 2025
In-person sessions at IOCS2-3 December 2025

Organising Committee

EOGB – Earth Observation Graphic Bureau

ReMedia Italia c/o ESA

Juan Ignacio Gossn

EUMETSAT

Gemma Kulk

PML

Laura Lorenzoni

NASA

Elin Meek

PML

Hiroshi Murakami

JAXA

Marie-Helene Rio

ESA

Roberto Sabia

ESA

Javier A. Concha Sepulveda

Serco c/o ESA

Jamie Shutler

University of Exeter

Ulla Väyrynen

Serco c/o ESA

Scientific Committee

Kelsey Bisson

NASA

Heather Bouman

University of Exeter

Astrid Bracher

AWI

Benoit Breguet

i-Sea

Bob Brewin

University of Exeter

Pete Bunting

Aberystwyth University

Joaquim I. Goes

Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO)

Tihomir Kostadinov

CSUSM

Tiit Kutser

University of Tartu

Joan Llort

BSC

Antonio Mannino

NASA

Victor Martinez-Vicente

PML

Emanuele Organelli

CNR

Cecile Rousseaux

NASA

Salem I. Salem

Plymouth Marine Laboratory

Richard Sanders

NORCE

Shubha Sathyendranath

PML/IOCCG

David Siegel

UC Santa Barbara

Osvaldo Ulloa

UDEC

Andrew Watson

University of Exeter

Contact info

For information regarding the submissions, author instructions, scientific committee related inquiries please contact

EO4Society.Conf@esa.int