Biological Influence on Ocean Carbon (BIO-Carbon)

Biological Influence on Ocean Carbon: Novel Modelling Approaches

Offers funding for United Kingdom researchers developing novel ocean carbon models in deep, open water systems and climate-relevant science.

Eligibility · United Kingdom, United States

The Biological Influence on Ocean Carbon: Novel Modelling Approaches 2026 is a targeted NERC call co-funded with NASA's EXPORTS (Export Processes in the Ocean from RemoTe Sensing) programme. It seeks new computational models of the biological processes that drive carbon storage and export in the open ocean, specifically in water columns above the deep ocean floor (seafloor depth greater than 1,000 metres) and beyond continental shelf breaks. The UK component of the programme carries a total budget of £1 million, distributed across multiple awards. Individual UK awards range from £50,000 to £312,500, funded at 80% fEC. Projects must start in January 2027 and may run for up to 24 months.

Eligible applicants are UK universities and NERC-eligible research organisations; for-profit companies, nonprofits, and individuals cannot lead applications. A notification of intent was required by 8 May 2026 — teams that did not submit one should contact NERC directly before proceeding. The full application deadline is 14 July 2026. The call explicitly targets novel modelling approaches, meaning proposals must go beyond applying existing models to new data; they must develop or substantially advance the underlying model architecture or biological parameterisation schemes.

The scheme's tight geographic and depth constraints — open ocean, deep water only — mean that researchers working primarily on shelf seas, coastal carbon, or benthic processes on shallow margins are out of scope. The NASA EXPORTS co-funding structure creates an expectation that UK models will be compatible with, or directly inform, satellite-based carbon export estimates. Competitive proposals will typically couple biological process representation (phytoplankton dynamics, zooplankton grazing, particle aggregation and sinking) with physical ocean transport, and should articulate how the model outputs will be validated against observational data from the EXPORTS field campaigns or equivalent datasets.