One of the most important carbon sinks is the Southern Ocean, the body of water surrounding Antarctica. Scientists, however, know surprisingly little about why, exactly, the Southern Ocean is such a successful carbon sink. What’s more, climate models that successfully predict ocean carbon absorption elsewhere in the world have diverged significantly when it comes to the Southern Ocean. One of the biggest issues with understanding more about what’s going on in the Southern Ocean is simply a lack of data. “The Southern Ocean is really far away, so we just haven’t done a lot of science there,” says McKinley.