The deeper roots of AOML can be traced to the oceanographic investigations of the United States Coast Survey beginning in the mid-19th century under the direction of Professor Alexander Dallas Bache, great grandson of Benjamin Franklin and a preeminent U.S. science figure of the age.

In subsequent decades, the urgency of charting coastal waters in support of growing commerce, a task increased by the acquisition of Alaska, Hawaii, and other island territories, came to require all the resources of the Coast Survey.

In early 1966, an Institute for Oceanography was created, primarily from research groups of the then-United States Coast and Geodetic Survey, which at the time was a part of the Environmental Science Services Administration (ESSA), the forerunner of NOAA).

AOML conducts research that seeks to understand the physical, chemical, and biological characteristics and processes of the ocean and atmosphere, both separately and as a coupled system.

The tools used to carry out these studies range from sensors on deep ocean moorings to satellite-based instruments to measurements made on research and commercial shipping vessels and autonomous vehicles, and include data analysis and numerical modeling as well as theoretical approaches.