ICPO was invited to participate in a meeting with Vladimir Ryabinin, Executive Secretary of UNESCO Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) during his visit to the First Institute of Oceanography (FIO), State Oceanic Administration on December 18^th, 2018.

During the meeting, Jose gave an overall introduction on WCRP and CLIVAR, with special emphasis on: 1) WCRP evaluation, 10-year new strategic plan and 5-year implementation plan; 2) new science plan of CLIVAR; 3) capacity building of CLIVAR, which includes the upcoming joint CLIVAR/IOC-ODC Summer Course on Sea Level Change in 2018; 4) ocean synthesis and reanalysis effort of CLIVAR (mainly through Global Synthesis and Observation Panel). Both CLIVAR and IOC saw promising potential cooperation areas in the future, e.g. a better understanding of oceanic processes; better prediction for ocean variability and changes, as well as the impact on human beings; ocean observation and data management and reanalysis, etc.

Vladimir emphasized that the newly approved ‘UN Decadal of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development’ provides a great opportunity for advancing ocean science in the next few years, and enabling it of equal importance as meteorological science, which has received great attention and grown rapidly in the past decades. IOC will focus on enhancing the science capacity of its member states under UN Sustainable Development Gold No. 14.

Prof. Tiegang LI, Director General of FIO, also highlighted the success of international cooperation, in particular 7 training sessions organised by the UNESCO-IOC Regional Training and Research Center on Ocean Dynamics and Climate, which has been established in FIO since 2011, as well as hosting the ICPO since 2014. Li mentioned specific research interests in the area of microplastics, Indian Ocean and Western Pacific warming pool, ENSO revolution in changing climate, ICTZ shift and Monsoon teleconnection, etc. ICPO pointed out that the future cooperation on Indian Ocean, Pacific Ocean, and monsoon teleconnection could be realised via CLIVAR basin panels.