OceanObs’09
The World Climate Research Programme (WCRP), the Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS), and the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) have called for the OceanObs’09 conference, charging the organizers to help lay out a path for sustaining the benefits of ocean information and services in the coming decade. To accomplish those goals, the conference will be different from OceanObs’99.
OceanObs’09 will celebrate the benefits of the existing initial ocean observing system and highlight its potential, developing a consensus plan for sustaining and evolving systematic and routine global ocean observations in the coming decade. Equally important, OceanObs’09 will outline a framework to develop ocean information and service systems over the coming decade, with benefits for the scientific community, and to support sound decisions in other areas of societal benefit including agriculture, adaptation to climate change, hazard warnings, health, and other economic sectors. The conference will define the observing system required for the development of these information and service systems.
The conference will be structured around three pillars of community input. The core input solicited are Community White Papers on various elements of the observing in situ or satellite observing system, data system, and services. These are asked to be group contributions, refreshing existing plans in light of new information and technology, or describing contributions to the sustained global ocean observing system from new communities with a plan for a globally-deployed network, infrastructure, or service.
Additional Contributions which describe new developments in observing hardware, or regional observing efforts, infrastructures or services that contribute to the global system, are also invited, with first drafts due in March 2009. These will be presented as posters at the conference.
