13th IRF Annual Meeting held on Dec. 9

The Thirteenth Annual Meeting of the Indian Ocean Observing System Resource Forum (IRF-13) was organized on 9th December 2021. Dr. Juliet Hermes and Dr. Roxy Mathew Koll, co-chairs of IORP, and Dr. Jose Santos and Jing Li from the ICPO participated in the meeting as IRF members from the CLIVAR side.

Brief updates on existing initiatives and introduction to new initiatives and projects relevant to IRF and IndOOS were presented during the meeting. Highlights of the meeting are summarized below:

  1. OMNI-RAMA Joint Data Portal was Launched in August 2021, during the virtual signing ceremony of the new implementation agreement between MoES and NOAA;
  2. A working group on IndOOS review recommendation tracking was established by IORP, let by Motoki Nagura. The group is planning to prepare a progress report on the IndOOS-2 implementation. Inputs from IRF members and IIOE-2 country reports are expected by January 2022.
  3. An article titled ‘The Global Ocean Observing System: Oceans of Data for Earth System Predictions’ was published in the WMO Bulletin (Vol 70 (2) – 2021), introducing the main in situ elements of GOOS,  challenges and opportunities, and highlighting the practical successes of GOOS to help improve WMO services, and the co-designing process of GOOS.
  4. The 2022 International Indian Ocean Science Conference (IIOSC-22) will be organized on March 14-18, 2022, in Goa. Annual meetings of IOGOOS, IIOE-2, IORP, SIBER and etc. are also being scheduled alongside the conference.
  5. Conceptual Indian Ocean Test Bed Prototype for the GOOS Co-Design and the WMO Unified Data Policy were also introduced.
  6. The next IRF meeting is scheduled for April 2022.