SO-CHIC SO-CHIC Kick-Off Meeting

Paris, 15 November. All partners of the SO-CHIC project – Southern Ocean, Carbon and Heat Impact on Climate – met for the first time from 13 – 15 November 2019 in Paris, France, for the kick-off meeting of the project. In the focus: the main objectives, implementation plan and management behind SO-CHIC.

“Our current lack of understanding of heat and carbon fluxes and storage in the Southern Ocean is strongly limiting our knowledge of earth energy budget and climate sensitivity. SO-CHIC attacks those issues to help reducing uncertainties in future climate. I’m delighted to be starting this scientifically exciting and highly policy relevant project, leveraging on and reinforcing the current Southern Ocean Observation System with such a brilliant team”, emphasized Jean-Baptiste Sallée, researcher at Sorbonne Université and coordinator of SO-CHIC in his opening speech.

With all the knowledge gathered, SO-CHIC will develop a combined approach to monitor these key processes taking place in the Atlantic sector of the Southern Ocean. The project will set up a strategy of novel and innovative observations, to be highly complementary to the existing observation system. A coordinated observation-modeling effort will be proposed to push the limits of observations, together with expanding boundaries of ocean and climate models.

The kick-off meeting allowed the partners to better understand these significant objectives at a micro and macro level, and how they can contribute to each task. Work packages leaders hosted working groups to plan and initiate the project’s activities, discuss the observational and modeling aspects systems, and, design the external communications and dissemination strategy. The meeting was a success, with the partnership eager to begin its work immediately.