Climate Change and Variability

Summary and Expectations

Today, the international climate service and policy agenda requires high-quality, scientifically sound, and reliable information requiring sustained observational efforts that feed into gridded products, models, and reanalyses to detect, monitor, understand, and predict climate variations and change. This session aims to refine high-level recommendations for the next decade based on OceanObs’19 Community White Papers focused on ocean related climate indicators such as those developed under GCOS and WCRP, including ocean temperature and heat content, sea level, ocean acidification, air-sea flux, and sea ice extent. The expected outcome of this event is to identify an international roadmap over the next decade to support timely, sustained, and high-quality delivery of ocean Global Climate Indicators with reduced uncertainties and to identify opportunities for regular joint international assessments.

Expected Outcomes/Recommendations

• Augmentation and refined definition of the Global Climate Indicator framework: towards a comprehensive Earth system view.
• Achieve accuracy targets for EOVs / ECVs to provide ocean related global climate indicator at required accuracy.
• Reduce capability gaps for EOVs / ECVs measurements under the ocean related global climate indicator framework.