We would like to inform you that the 2022 Gordon Research Conference (GRC) on Ocean Biogeochemistry will take place on May 1-6, 2022, in Castelldefels, near Barcelona, Spain. The Conference will focus on biogeochemical processes that occur across space and time in the ocean. Oral and poster presentations and discussions will address current topics ranging from deoxygenation, elemental cycles mediated by keystone organisms and viruses, carbon pumps, processes in high latitude oceans and shelf seas, to processes in past and future oceans. A detailed program along with information on travel and venue and applications can found online at https://www.grc.org/ocean-biogeochemistry-conference/2022/. Applications for this meeting must be submitted by April 3, 2022. Please apply early, as some meetings become oversubscribed (full) before this deadline. Check the Conference website for updates. 

The 2022 GRC will be preceded by a Gordon Research Seminar (GRS) on Ocean Biogeochemistry (April 30 - May 1), open to graduate students and postdocs interested in marine biogeochemistry and related fields. The GRS will provide a forum for early career researchers to present and discuss results from their research in a peer-to-peer setting in advance of the GRC. Those interested in attending both meetings must submit an application for the GRS in addition to an application for the GRC. Refer to the associated GRS program page for more information.

The 2022 GRC on Ocean Biogeochemistry is chaired by Chuanlun Zhang (Southern University of Science and Technology, China) and Susanne Neuer (Arizona State University, USA), with Adina Paytan (University of California, Santa Cruz, USA) and Fei Chai (Second Institute of Oceanography, China / University of Maine, USA; IOCCP SSG member) serving as vice-chairs.

We would like to let you know that the Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research (SCOR) booth at the Ocean Sciences Meeting 2022 (OSM 2022) exhibits a SCOR flyer along with SCOR promotional videos, some posters and material from some of SCOR's projects (GEOTRACES, SOLAS, IMBeR, GlobalHAB, IQOE, IOCCP), Working Groups, and a prospectus on SCOR's capacity development activities. If you are attending OSM 2022 (Feb 24 - Mar 4), you are invited to have a look at the booth and to participate in the many SCOR related activities. The SCOR promotional material has been uploaded to the SCOR YouTube channel and website accessible through the links below:

SCOR flyer: https://scor-int.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/SCOR-flyer2.pdf
SCOR video full length: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRVM0x_d0tA
SCOR video abridged: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxCzYjP6AuQ
SCOR Photo Gallery: https://scor-int.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/SCOR-Photo-Gallery.pdf

The Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) supported by EUMETSAT will be holding a conference to assess how the current global climate observing system can be improved to better support current and near-term user needs for climate information. This conference follows on from the first climate observation conference, Global Climate Observation: The Road to The Future held on 2–4 March 2016 in Amsterdam. The conference will take into account the GCOS Status Report 2021 as well as the GCOS Implementation Plan 2022 (in preparation), which will make recommendations to meteorological networks, ocean and land major observing systems and satellite agencies and will be presented to the UNFCCC in 2022. A scientific committee is being setup under the leadership of Prof. Sabrina Speich, and an invitation for abstracts will be issued in March 2022. 

Please mark your calendars now for this important conference from 17 to 19 October 2022. We hope that in spite of COVID-19 pandemic the meeting will be held in person, but hybrid options will be considered too. The registration page for the conference will open in March 2022 and more detail on the programme will be available at that time. All information will be made available at our meeting website: https://www.eventsforce.net/gcos-coc In the meantime, if you have any questions related to the conference, do not hesitate to contact us via email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

If you are attending the 2022 Ocean Sciences Meeting, you are invited to join the Town Hall Meeting "FAIR data solutions to support a global observing system of marine ecological time series" on 24 February 2022 at 15:00 EST (Room 1) to learn more about a new NSF EarthCube-funded Research Coordination Network for Marine Ecological Time Series (METS-RCN). METS-RCN is tasked with bringing together members of the oceanographic, data science, and informatics communities to build consensus on key components of a FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) (Wilkinson, 2016) data model for METS, including common vocabularies, metadata reporting standards, and data citation practices; engage broader METS data users (e.g., modelers, educators, decision makers) to facilitate broader applications of METS data; and build community capacity for METS data analysis, statistical methods, and data-model integration. This town hall meeting will also highlight a concurrent EU H2020 EuroSea-funded project led by members of the RCN leadership team focused on developing a pilot biogeochemical time series data product to help visualize spatial patterns and trends across ocean basins.

We would like to bring to your attention a very refreshing overview of the current status, challenges and paths forward related to ocean observing system integration and coordination, published in Frontiers in Marine Science in late January: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmars.2021.737671/full.

Adèle Révelard and co-authors describe the current, rather suboptimal, situation touching on many fundamental drawbacks like excessive multiplication of overlapping efforts, confusion related to roles and responsibilities of entities involved in coordination, counter-productive effects of current academic excellence assessment system and more. They then point to several critical transformations needed in order for the ocean observing system to evolve into a societally useful, structurally flexible and innovative tool aligned with the spirit of the UN Ocean Decade.

We praise the authors for referring to and concluding from a large body of work on the topic published in the past decade or so, and recommend reading this article to everyone with stakes in ocean observing integration and coordination.

We would like to give you an update on the 53^rd Ocean Liège Colloquium-GO₂NE Oxygen Conference which will take place from May 16^th to May 20^th 2022 (with a mentoring event for early career scientists on May 15^th). Considering the circumstances, the event will be in a HYBRID FORMAT to be able to engage with all of you throughout the world. You will have the possibility to present your work either on site or at distance.

The abstract submission deadline has been extended until February 20^th.  At this stage, we have already received more than 130 abstracts. More information on the event's web site: https://www.ocean-colloquium.uliege.be/ 

We would like to let you know about a new effort to organize an international seawater DI¹⁴C comparison exercise the immediate need for which was recognized by the participants at the recent Carbon Isotope in the Ocean workshop, sponsored by US Ocean Carbon & Biogeochemistry. If this of interest to you or your group, please fill out a short form (https://forms.gle/L9YrmtahxXBBCivE9) in order to help the organizers find out how many laboratories would like to be involved in such an exercise. 

Please fill out this form by February 11, 2022. Thank you!

On behalf of: Ann McNichol (WHOI, USA), Bob Key (Princeton University, USA), Roberta Hansman (WHOI/NOSAMS, USA), Rolf Sonnerup (University of Washington, USA)

The Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research (SCOR) Secretariat invites proposals for new working groups to commence activities in late 2022. Deadline for submissions is 30 April 2022. The selection of the new SCOR working groups will take place at the 2022 SCOR Annual Meeting scheduled to take place in Busan, Korea, on the week of the 3-7 October 2022.

You can find instructions, guidelines and a template to help prepare the proposals by following the link here. For more information, read the full call here.

­Please join the Global Ocean Oxygen Network (IOC Expert Working Group GO2NE) for a new session of its webinar series on ocean deoxygenation. This 10^th webinar will take place on 26 January 2022 at 15:00-16:00 UTC. The webinar will feature presentations by: Niels van Helmond (Utrecht University, the Netherlands) on "Sedimentary trace metals: a powerful indicator for bottom water redox conditions," and Laura Bristow (University of Southern Denmark, Denmark) on "Nitrogen cycling in anoxic waters: oxygen contamination and the need for in situ measurements." You can register for the webinar HERE. Recordings from this and past webinars are available from here: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=unesco+go2ne

We would like to let you know that Oceanography, the official magazine of The Oceanography Society, published its inaugural supplement on ocean observing, entitled "Frontiers in Ocean Observing: Documenting Ecosystems, Understanding Environmental Changes, Forecasting Hazards." Articles in this collection describe new technologies and reveal some exciting results that advance our understanding of the world ocean and its resources and support its sustainable use and management. Topics covered in the supplement align with the priorities of the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (2021–2030) in the following areas: (1) Ocean-Climate Nexus, (2) Ecosystems and Their Diversity, (3) Ocean Resources and the Economy Under Changing Environmental Conditions, (4) Pollutants and Contaminants and Their Potential Impacts on Human Health and Ecosystems, and (5) Multi-Hazard Warning Systems. The sixth and closing chapter describes several exciting new ocean observing technologies.

The supplement contains several articles related to marine biogeochemistry observations, including contributions from IOCCP SSG and Office members. You can access the whole collection here: https://tos.org/oceanography/issue/volume-34-issue-04-supplement