Ryan Woosley is a marine physical chemist focusing on the carbon cycle and ocean acidification. To date he has focused on quantifying the uptake and storage of anthropogenic carbon in the ocean over decadal time scales utilizing repeat hydrography cruises. These cruises utilize high precision carbon measurements repeated approximately every 10 years to look at changes in carbon chemistry and to separate natural versus anthropogenic causes. Quantifying these anthropogenic changes requires high precision and high accuracy measurements. Therefore, he has also been working to improve our accuracy and precision of carbon system measurements in order to further improve our understanding of the carbon cycle and the human perturbations of the cycle.

Ocean acidification has effects beyond just the carbon system. He is also working to understand some of the other effects of ocean acidification such as the speciation, solubility, and kinetics of trace metals. Trace metals have important implications for marine organisms as they can be trace nutrients or toxic. The pH of seawater plays an important role in the bioavailability of trace elements to organisms and thus plays an important role in the overall productivity of the oceans. He also has an interest in other physical chemical properties of the ocean such as the equation of state.