10th Session of the CLIVAR Pacific Panel

Submitted by LinaKang on Fri, 2015-10-30 06:00
The 10th Session of the CLIVAR Pacific Panel was held in Santiago, Chile on 10-11, October, 2015, locally hosted by the Millennium Institute of Oceanography (IMO), Chile. This session was coupled with the 11th ICSHMO meeting on 5-9 October, also in Santiago. 
This meeting had a full attendence of the panel members, with some guest attendees including Boris Dewitte from CLIVAR SSG, Antonietta Capatondi from USCLIVR ENSO diversity WG. Very productive discussions occurred about opportunities for new challenges within the Pacific Panel, such as the Pacific Decadal Variability/Hiatus, Pacific regional sea-level changes,  ENSO extreme, diversity, and variability at paleo time scales, ENSO predictability, Interbasin interactions, and ongoing observation programs. From the discussions, the panel realized that ENSO was a major science topic for the panel and relation with CLIVAR ENSO RF and IORP needed to be fostered. The interbasin interaction was also emphasized, and a proposal of holding a PRP/IORP/ENSO-RF joint workshop on Indo-Pacific climate variability and interbasin interaction was supported by the panel members. Future interaction with the CLIVAR Sea Level RF on the regional sea level change research, especially downscaling to coastal area, was also identified.
Lots of discussions had been dedicated to the western boundary current observation projects, such as SPICE, NPOCE, TPOS and programs from ITF. A new project on the Indonesian throughflow region, named Pacific Gateway to Indian Ocean (PGI in short) was proposed by Dongliang Yuan from IOCAS, China. It focused on the three source regions of the Indonesian throughflow in the warm pool of west Pacific, and studied its linkage with the climate variability. Co-chair of the panel, Alexandre Ganachaud, suggested the programs, and the future programs or monitoring systems being well coordinated by CLIVAR, including coherent plans, data quality and availability. He proposed to establish a joint TPOS2020-CLIVAR coordination group on the WBCs. Such group will optimize coordination and avoid duplicate efforts of the Pacific.
Detailed outcomes are included in the session report which is under drafting and will be made public soon on the Pacific Panel's webpage: http://www.clivar.org/clivar-panels/pacific