Success of the science workshop

The second “air-sea gas flux: Progress and Future prospects’ science workshop was held during 6-9 September 2016 in Brest, France.

The workshop was organized by the OceanFlux Greenhouse Gases Evolution project as a forum to bring the international and interdisciplinary air-sea gas flux scientific community together to present recent advances, report results from key initiatives and importantly to identify new goals, challenges and opportunities. The key focal point of the workshop was the synergistic use of models, in situ and remote sensing data and techniques for studying, and furthering this important area of climate research.

106 participants from 18 countries and 5 continents attended the four day workshop. Importantly much of the work and advances that were presented here in 2016 were identified as opportunities and challenges at the first workshop that was held 3 years ago in 2013.

The open discussion sessions within the workshop allowed areas of scientific importance to be debated and the identification of new opportunities. Topics discussed included the potential for multi-agency experiments, the need for fiducial reference measurements and the need for continued cross-disciplinary collaboration including the sharing of tools. These discussions took place during and at the end of the workshop, and have provided clear avenues for future work, that fit within the International Surface Ocean and Lower Atmosphere Study (SOLAS) scientific plans, aims and priorities, whilst also being relevant for agencies like the European Space Agency to support.

The workshop was a great success and a full workshop report will be made available on the project website in early 2017.