IOCCP-Activities: Observations-Modelling Interface

In December 2018, IOCCP Director and SSG member Rik Wanninkhof took part in a community workshop on "Synthesis and intercomparison of ocean carbon uptake in CMIP6 models." The workshop organized by US Ocean Carbon & Biogeochemistry (OCB) was held on December 8-9, 2018 in Washington, DC, USA, just before the Fall 2018 American Geophysical Union (AGU) Meeting. This activity complemented existing coordination of European modeling centers by building lines of communication between the US observational and analysis communities and the various contributing modeling centers in the US (NASA/GISS, NCAR/CESM, and NOAA/GFDL), Canada (CCCMA), and Australia (CSIRO) in advance of the 6^th phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP), which will inform the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 6^th Assessment.  

Report from this workshop can be found here: https://www.us-ocb.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/43/2019/04/OCB-CMIP6-Workshop-Report-17-April-2019.pdf

In December 2019, the OceanObs'19 Community White Paper on "Multidisciplinary Observing in the World Ocean’s Oxygen Minimum Zone Regions: From Climate to Fish — The VOICE Initiative" was published. The Variability of the Oxycline and its ImpaCt on the Ecosystem (VOICE; http://www.ioccp.org/voice) initiative, supported by IOCCP since its beginning in 2017, aims to demonstrate how societal benefit applications drive the need for integration and optimization of biological, biogeochemical, and physical components of regional ocean observing related to eastern boundary systems (EBSs). VOICE chose to focus on the upper oxycline (transition between high and low oxygen waters) which is fundamentally important for the ecosystem structure and can be a useful proxy for multiple observing (and modelling) objectives connected to EBSs that neighbour oxygen minimum zones. In this paper, we present a first readiness level assessment for ocean observing of the oxycline in EBS around the globe.