Catarina Guerreiro, a researcher at CIÊNCIAS, co coordinates an international plan for ocean–atmosphere research through to 2035

The SOLAS 3.0 Science Plan (2026–2035), the new scientific plan of the international Surface Ocean–Lower Atmosphere Study (SOLAS) programme, which sets out the main research priorities for the next decade on ocean–atmosphere interactions, has now been released. The document is the result of almost three years of international collaborative work and is organised into three major components: Discovery Science, Science Towards Solutions, and Scientific Community and Skill Development.

Catarina V. Guerreiro, a researcher at MARE and Ciências ULisboa, and a collaborator of IDL, contributed to the development of the plan and co‑coordinated the Discovery Science component, dedicated to fundamental questions on the physical, chemical and biogeochemical interactions and feedbacks between the ocean and the atmosphere. In this interview, she explains the significance of this involvement, the main changes introduced by the new plan, and the importance of the research carried out at Ciências ULisboa, MARE and IDL for this field.

What does it mean to you to have taken part in the development of the SOLAS 3.0 Science Plan and, in particular, to have co‑coordinated the Discovery Science component?

It means a great deal, both scientifically and personally. My path within SOLAS began in 2023, when I was invited to integrate Portugal, for the first time, into the SOLAS National and Regional Network, taking on its national representation. Shortly afterwards, I was invited to contribute to the development of the new Science Plan and, later, to co‑coordinate the Discovery Science component. It was an important opportunity to contribute, from within my own research area, to a much broader reflection on the questions that the ocean–atmosphere community should be able to answer over the next decade. The process extended over almost three years and required us to bridge languages, disciplines, temporal and spatial scales, and different scientific priorities. For me, that was perhaps the greatest learning experience: understanding how a collective scientific vision is built without losing the diversity of perspectives that gives it strength. SOLAS has, in the meantime, become much more than a scientific network in which I participate; it has become an international community from which I learn, with which I collaborate, and where I find enormous openness to discussion and to the joint, transdisciplinary construction of science. Co‑coordinating Discovery Science also had a particular significance because, in a way, this is the component that seeks to identify the fundamental science we need in order to understand, in a quantitative and integrated (i.e., process‑based) manner, the interactions and feedbacks between the ocean and the atmosphere, and how these reorganise within an Earth system subject to increasingly rapid change.

There is an important shift in structure and perspective. The 2015–2025 Science Plan was organised around five major scientific themes: greenhouse gases; mass and energy fluxes at the ocean–atmosphere interface; atmospheric deposition and ocean biogeochemistry; interactions between aerosols, clouds and marine ecosystems; and ocean biogeochemical control of atmospheric chemistry.

These processes remain at the core of SOLAS science, but the new SOLAS 3.0 Science Plan integrates them into three components: Discovery Science, Science Towards Solutions, and Scientific Community and Skill Development. Fundamental science continues to be the starting point, but the new plan strengthens the connection between knowledge, responses to climate and environmental challenges, and the development of the community and global collaborations needed to achieve this.Within the Discovery Science component, a central priority is to move from a more process‑focused understanding to a quantitative and integrated view of the ocean–atmosphere system: understanding fluxes and feedbacks, their variability, their response to extreme events, and how processes connect across different spatial and temporal scales. This requires combining observations, laboratory experiments, remote sensing, autonomous platforms and modelling, while also taking advantage of new technologies, including artificial intelligence and machine learning. The ambition is to better understand a coupled system whose evolution has direct consequences for climate, ecosystems and society.

How has the research carried out at Ciências ULisboa, MARE and IDL contributed to this process and to the priorities now defined?

There is a very direct link between the research I have been developing at Ciências, MARE and IDL and several of the priorities now established. My research line seeks to understand how atmospheric and oceanographic processes affect planktonic communities and the biogeochemical cycles they influence, and how these signals propagate from the ocean surface down to the sediment. Micropalaeontology is particularly valuable in this context because it allows us to connect processes observable today with records that integrate much longer temporal scales, thereby placing present‑day variability within the context of Earth‑system evolution. This approach is present in the MSCA‑H2020‑DUSTCO and CEECIND‑CHASE projects, which I coordinated, as well as in H2020‑PORTWIMS and ESA‑PRIMUS, in which I participated. These projects combine satellite observations, time series of biogenic particle fluxes, microcosm experiments, oceanographic campaigns and sedimentary records to study interactions between the atmosphere, ocean and climate. Following these signals through the water column down to the sediment allows us to assess what is recycled, what is exported and what is preserved in the sedimentary record. More recently, as national coordinator of OAEPIIP and PI of PREDICT‑OAE, I have broadened the scope of my research to include ocean alkalinity enhancement and its implications for plankton and the carbon cycle.

Although distinct, these research lines converge on a central question of SOLAS 3.0: understanding how physical, chemical and biological processes interact and shape the ocean’s response to global change and human interventions. Their understanding and quantification are essential to improving the representation of these processes in biogeochemical and climate models, which help us anticipate how the ocean and climate may evolve in the future.

What does it mean for Ciências, and for MARE and IDL, to have a researcher involved in defining the priorities of an international scientific network of this scale?

I believe it means, first and foremost, that the research carried out at Ciências contributes to an international discussion on issues that concern all of us: the role of the ocean in the climate, the consequences of global change, and possible responses to these challenges. Being represented in this process allows Ciências not only to take part in the execution of science, but also to contribute to defining the scientific questions and priorities for the next decade. There is also an important institutional gain in the opposite direction. SOLAS brings to CIÊNCIAS an international community that spans oceanography, atmospheric sciences, ecology, marine geology, biogeochemistry and modelling, and whose inter‑ and transdisciplinary research is increasingly relevant in today’s climatic and environmental context. This ultimately stimulates the creation of synergies within Ciências, including MARE, IDL, CQE and CEAUL, and between national institutions and international partners, involving students and early‑career researchers. For me, this multiplier effect is just as important as individual participation in the Science Plan: bringing the network into the institution and, at the same time, taking to the network the science we produce in Portugal.

What impact do you expect this new plan to have on research into ocean–atmosphere interactions in the coming years? 

Above all, I hope it will function as a good Science Plan should: as a catalyst for new questions, collaborations and projects. SOLAS 3.0 was designed to provide a shared scientific direction, but one that is sufficiently open to incorporate new questions, observations and technologies over the next decade. Many of the major challenges we face, from understanding the role of the ocean in the climate system to assessing mitigation, adaptation or CO₂ removal strategies, require contributions from different disciplines, institutions and countries. I would therefore like SOLAS 3.0, ten years from now, to have helped generate new science, observations and experiments, better models, new tools and, above all, new global collaborations. And I would particularly like Portugal to play an active part in this path, bringing new collaborations, skills and opportunities into our institutions in a field that is becoming increasingly relevant both scientifically and socially.