Max Robotics — Global Service Robot Directory + US Certification

About

Nathan Briggs is a leading oceanographer whose research focuses on the biological carbon pump and the ocean’s role in regulating Earth’s climate. His most influential work, a 2020 *Science* paper with over 250 citations, revealed that particle fragmentation—not just microbial degradation—is a dominant process reducing the downward flux of sinking organic carbon in the ocean’s twilight zone. This finding fundamentally revised our understanding of how the ocean sequesters atmospheric CO₂, showing that physical breakup of particles cuts carbon export by more than 70% in the mesopelagic zone. Briggs has also pioneered the use of autonomous robotic platforms to observe ocean processes at unprecedented scales. His multi-year robotic float deployments in the Southern Ocean have uncovered strong seasonality in carbon export, challenging the assumption that gravitational sinking is the sole pathway for organic matter transport. More recently, he has been instrumental in advancing the Deep Argo program, which aims to observe the full ocean volume—from surface to abyssal depths—using a global array of profiling floats. This work is critical for tracking how warming and freshening signals from Antarctica are spreading through the deep ocean. Briggs’s research combines innovative observational techniques with fundamental biogeochemical insights, making him a key figure in understanding the ocean’s role in the climate system.