IOCCP-Activities: Oxygen

We are pleased to inform you about the upcoming Webinar on Ocean Deoxygenation organized by the Global Ocean Oxygen Network (IOC Expert Working Group GO₂NE). The 24th webinar of the series will take place on 20 November 2023, at 17:00 CET. The webinar will feature presentations by two early-career scientists, 20 minutes each, followed by 10 minutes moderated discussion sessions. Please register for the webinar here.

We are excited to bring to your attention the GOOD-OARS-CLAP-COPAS International Summer School, which will be held in Chile in November 2023. The Summer School is designed to prepare the next generation of ocean scientists that will engage in multidisciplinary research and increase our understanding on the response of marine ecosystems in the next decades. Students will learn the necessary knowledge and skills of the many disciplines needed to understand the ocean and atmospheric processes involved in ocean deoxygenation and acidification with a focus on Eastern Boundary Upwelling systems. It will expose students and early-career scientists to recent developments and methodologies in the study of biogeochemical and physical feedbacks between the ocean and atmosphere in a changing environment.

We would like to remind you that the abstract submission deadline for the 53^rd International Colloquium on Ocean Dynamics is on 16 January 2022. A limited number of travel grants are offered to young scientists, PhD students and early post-docs who are submitting an abstract as presenting author (oral or poster). To apply for these grants, please send your application before January 31^st 2022. Follow this link for more information on the travel grants and application process.

We are excited to let you know that IOCCP is co-organzing and co-sponsoring the 53^rd International Colloquium on Ocean Dynamics which will take place on 16-20 May 2022 in Liege, Belgium. The theme of the 53rd Liege colloquium is "Low oxygen environments in marine and coastal waters: Drivers, consequences, solutions." The event will investigate new developments and insights related to deoxygenation in open and coastal waters. The colloquium is a contribution to the Ocean Decade program Global Ocean Oxygen Decade (GOOD). Please see the Colloquium website for a complete list of sessions, including one on "Deoxygenation: observing and modelling" co-convened by Véronique Garçon, IOCCP Co-Chair. Véronique and Maciej Telszewski, IOCCP Director, represent IOCCP on the Colloquium Organizing and Scientific Committee.

We would like to draw your attention to the recent IUCN review report on "Ocean deoxygenation: Everyone's problem." This report is the largest peer-reviewed study so far into the causes, impacts and possible solutions to ocean deoxygenation. Ocean regions with low oxygen concentrations are expanding, with around 700 sites worldwide now affected by low oxygen conditions – up from only 45 in the 1960s. In the same period, the volume of anoxic waters – areas completely depleted of oxygen – in the global ocean has quadrupled, according to the report. The ocean is expected to lose 3–4% of its oxygen inventory globally by the year 2100 under a business-as-usual scenario, but the global average masks local changes that are predicted to be, for example, more severe in mid to high latitudes. Most of the losses are predicted to be concentrated in the upper 1000 m of the water column, which is richest in marine biodiversity. The full report and summary for policy makers are available from: https://www.iucn.org/theme/marine-and-polar/our-work/climate-change-and-oceans/ocean-deoxygenation

We are very happy to inform you that the Global Ocean Oxygen Network (GO₂NE) formed by the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO (IOC-UNESCO) will hold an international Summer School from September 2 to 8, 2019, on Xiamen University's Xiang'an Campus in China, hosted by the State Key Laboratory of Marine Environmental Science. IOCCP is one of the co-sponsors of the event, and IOCCP SSG member Véronique Garçon is part of the Scientific and the Organising Committee.

Earlier this year the Oxygen Theme was added to IOCCP's portfolio and Véronique Garçon was appointed as the SSG member responsible for related IOCCP activities. Now we are happy to invite you to check out the new Oxygen Theme site at: www.ioccp.org/oxygen. You will find information about ongoing IOCCP activities related to oxygen observations, projects and programs involved, as well as links to relevant databases, information products, references and other resources potentially useful to the marine biogeochemistry observing community. If you have any questions or suggestions for how the website could be improved, please don't hesitate to contact the This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

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.

The 2^nd VOICE (Variability of the Oxycline and its ImpaCt on the Ecosystem; http://www.ioccp.org/voice) Science Plan workshop took place on 8-9 September 2018 in Kiel, Germany, in conjunction with the International Conference on 'Ocean Deoxygenation: Drivers and Consequences – Past, Present and Future', held on 3-7 September 2018. The main point on the meeting agenda was to perform the readiness level assessment based on information collected from the various Oxygen Minimum Zone demonstration regions all over the world. During the meeting, we reviewed the results of analysing the answers to spreadsheet questionnaires that were distributed among the VOICE regional champions in order to collect information on current status and gaps in requirement setting, observing capacity and data and information product management. The main outcome of this workshop will be the submission of VOICE Community White Paper in response to an invitation from the OceanObs'19 Conference Program Committee. IOCCP SSG member Véronique Garçon is a Co-Chair of VOICE, and IOCCP Project Office is providing support for this international initiative. To learn more about VOICE, please see our page dedicated to this project: http://www.ioccp.org/voice. 

IOCCP SSG member Véronique Garçon and IOCCP Director Maciej Telszewski are members of the Global Ocean Oxygen Network (GO₂NE) Executive Council since its establishment in 2016 as an IOC-UNESCO Working Group. GO₂NE is committed to providing a global and multidisciplinary view of deoxygenation, with a focus on understanding its multiple aspects and impacts. The Network offers scientific advice to policy makers to counter this concerning trend and to preserve marine resources in the presence of deoxygenation. Currently, the members of the core working group represent 21 institutions in 11 countries.

We are happy to inform you about the publication of the report of the Variability in the Oxycline and its ImpaCts on the Ecosystem (VOICE) Science Plan Workshop which took place on 13-15 September 2017 in Monterey, CA, USA, and hosted by the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI). The workshop was a three-day event, held in conjunction with the Global Ocean Oxygen Network (GO₂NE) third annual meeting (11-13 September 2017). The workshop was attended by 22 scientists from around the globe, and was the first opportunity to establish communication and initiate coordination of efforts leading to the implementation of the VOICE project, which is an outcome of the Implementation of Multi-disciplinary Sustained Ocean Observations (IMSOO) workshop in February 2017. The workshop was generously sponsored by GOOS, IOCCP, NOAA and SOLAS, and its organisation was facilitated by the IOCCP Office. 

We are happy to inform you about the publication of the report of the Variability in the Oxycline and its ImpaCts on the Ecosystem (VOICE) Science Plan Workshop which took place on 13-15 September 2017 in Monterey, CA, USA, and hosted by the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI). The workshop was a three-day event, held in conjunction with the Global Ocean Oxygen Network (GO₂NE) third annual meeting (11-13 September 2017). The workshop was attended by 22 scientists from around the globe, and was the first opportunity to establish communication and initiate coordination of efforts leading to the implementation of the VOICE project, which is an outcome of the Implementation of Multi-disciplinary Sustained Ocean Observations (IMSOO) workshop in February 2017. The workshop was generously sponsored by GOOS, IOCCP, NOAA and SOLAS, and its organisation was facilitated by the IOCCP Office.