Our oceans play a major role in driving the earth’s climate. Scientists are beginning to understand the cyclical patterns of coupling between the atmosphere and the ocean that operate on temporal periods from years to decades to millennia that control weather patterns around the globe. From the well publicized El Nino cycle in the Eastern Tropical Pacific that results in droughts and deluges in North and South America, to the multi-decadal Pacific cycles that now appear to be responsible for the drying of the Western United States, there is no doubt the oceans help govern climate change.

Scientists are now faced with new questions. Is the recent apparent rapid warming of the atmosphere part of a long-term heating and cooling cycle or a result of the increase in atmospheric greenhouse gasses from human activity? What role will does the ocean play in this change? How will a warmer atmosphere impact the oceans’ physical and biogeochemical processes?

Within these questions is the role of the oceans as both a source and sink for carbon dioxide and gas exchange with the earth’s atmosphere. Just as ecosytems on land such as the Brazilian rain forest have a role in atmospheric gas exchange, life in the ocean plays a major role in this carbon dioxide–oxygen exchange with the atmosphere. Currently, only about half the carbon dioxide produced by humans each year ends up in the atmosphere. The other half is "missing."

The ocean is the most likely place the majority of the "missing" anthropogenic carbon is being sequestered. Can this continue if the atmosphere and ocean warm up? How will a warmer ocean change with respect to productivity and biodiversity? Will the oceans continue to absorb anthropogenic carbon dioxide or will the arrow shift and the oceans become a source of CO₂ to the atmosphere?

Scientists around the world are working now to predict and monitor the biogeochemistry of the ocean in order to address these issues. WET Lab’s chlorophyll fluorometers, transmissometers and underwater spectrophotometers are providing in-water assays of the ocean productivity and serving as ground-truthing tools for satellites (such as the chlorophyll distribution acquired by SeaWIFS above) tracking the distribution of optical and biogeochemical properties of the surface ocean.