The ocean is a major player in controlling the Earth’s climate and marine microbes are key in this process. The motivation for the work we do is that climate-driven processes such as ocean acidification, warming, and alterations in nutrient availability control the short- and long-term fate of marine phytoplankton. We have recently focused our work on the Santa Barbara Channel through the SBC-LTER and the Plumes & Blooms projects where we conduct monthly sampling for inorganic carbon chemistry and analysis of coccolithophore populations through flow cytometry.