CLIVAR Town Hall Meeting at the 2012 Ocean Sciences Meeting, 21 February, Salt Lake City USA

Martin Visbeck, CLIVAR SSG co-chair, kicked off the evening event with a brief overview of CLIVAR objectives and organisation. He emphasised that international CLIVAR focused on problems that require international coordination or cooperation and outlined how CLIVAR fits into the bigger scheme of WCRP and the other international Global Change programmes.

He then invited comments from the audience on what a future WCRP programme that focuses on the ocean-atmosphere component of the climate system should encompass. Suggestions from the floor beyond topics such as regional sealevel, decadal predictability, ocean upwelling systems and tropical biases included:

• greater emphasis on the deep ocean, e.g., for studies of heat content, carbon;
• investigation of the marine fresh water budget over the ocean;
• training, capacity building, for instance at the university level in developing countries;
• building international cooperation, particularly to improve the legal situation for ocean observations in exclusive economic zones;
• effective and practical data management schemes;
• western boundary currents; and
• more channels for communication with scientists from developing countries who are keen to participate in international activities.

Participants enjoyed free drinks and snacks courtesy of the Kiel Marine Sciences ”Future Ocean” project.