Right ahead of the Chinese Spring Festival, the Northwestern Pacific Ocean Circulation and Climate Experiment (NPOCE) greets a big family reunion on the occasion of its 2021 Scientific Steering Committee (SSC) annual meeting, which is held on 28th January 2022 by online platform.

All participants

26 attendees from Australia, China, Japan, Korea, and the United States attended this meeting, including 15 SSC members and 9 distinguished guests, Wenju Cai and Sonya Legg as co-chairs of CLIVAR Scientific Steering Group, Wenxi Zhu as Head and Programme Specialist of UNESCO IOC/WESTPAC, Antonietta Capotondi as co-chair of CLIVAR Pacific Panel, Xiaopei Lin as co-chair of CSK2 International Steering Group, Jose Santos as Executive Director of International CLIVAR Project Office, Rencheng Yu as the deputy director of IOCAS, Yanwei Li as the head of international cooperation office of IOCAS etc.

Fan Wang chairs the first session

The vice-chairs, Fan Wang and Janet Sprintall chair the meeting. At the opening address, Dunxin Hu, chair of current NPOCE SSC, extends a sincere welcome to the representatives from UNESCO, CLIVAR, etc., and all NPOCE SSC members. Then, Fan Wang announces the new term of NPOCE SSC membership, which includes 14 members from six countries, China, France, Japan, Korea, Papua New Guinea, and the United States. They are (alphabetically by last name) Fei Chai, Zhaohui Chen, Sophie Cravatte, Chalapan Kaluwin, William Kessler, Jae-hak Lee, Akira Nagano, Jae-hun Park, Bo Qiu, Hiroaki Saito, Janet Sprintall, Fan Wang, Wei-Lei Wang, Dongliang Yuan.

Hui Zhou, the executive officer of the NPOCE office, presents the NPOCE annual report. Although the COVID-19 makes everything slow down, NPOCE has made substantial progress on both field experiments and scientific research in the past two years through joint efforts by all SSC members, including five cruises in the Northwestern Pacific and one cruise in Indonesian Seas.

After the annual report, four reports are presented focusing on detailed progress associated with the five themes of NPOCE scientific Foci. Bo Qiu reviews progress on Dynamics and variability of the Pacific Western Boundary Currents, Janet Sprintall on Interaction between the western Pacific Ocean (WPO) and the Indian Ocean through the ITF, Cong Guan & Fan Wang on Variability of the WPO circulation and its effects on the warm pool and climate, and Fei Chai on WPO's role in the variability of biogeochemical processes.

Invited talk by Wenxi Zhu

Four invited talks from Wenxi Zhu, Xiaopei Lin, Rencheng Yu, and William Kessler shed light on seeking more opportunities to coordinate with the IOC/WESTPAC and other international programs implemented around the WPO, such as CSK-II, I³PCC, and TPOS2020.

Janet Sprintall leads the SSC discussion

In the following in-house session, SSC members of the new term elect the new chair and vice-chairs according to the nomination by the current chair, Dunxin Hu. Fan Wang is elected as the chair, and Janet Sprintall and Fei Chai as vice-chairs, who are well prepared to continue efforts in leading a productive NPOCE in the new term. Then all SSC members discuss the plan of NPOCE, and all get consensus on a more focusing and achievable plan for NPOCE to make a better implication to fulfill the goals of CLIVAR and UN Decade of Ocean Science in the next few years. They also discuss data sharing and management. The fourth Open Science Symposium on Western Pacific Ocean Circulation and Climate is scheduled to be held in October 2022 locally organized by Xiamen University. To promote communications among SSC members and young scientists under the limitation on international travel by COVID-19, NPOCE will organize webinars every two months.

Participants of IOCAS

(Editor: ZHANG Yiyi)