To foster knowledge and ideas exchange within the marine environmental science community and, in particular, to promote interdisciplinary studies, the State Key Laboratory of Marine Environmental Science (MEL, http://mel.xmu.edu.cn/en) of Xiamen University initiated the Xiamen Symposium on Marine Environmental Sciences (XMAS), with the overarching theme of The Changing Ocean Environment: From a Multidisciplinary Perspective. The XMAS-III was held in Jan 2017, attracting over 620 participants from more than 140 institutions across 21 countries.

The fourth iteration, XMAS-IV, will be held in Xiamen from January 6th to 9th, 2019. The symposium will consist of different, interconnected sessions covering physical oceanography, marine biogeochemistry, biological oceanography, and marine ecotoxicology along with workshops for emerging topics in marine environmental sciences.

A SOLAS session 'Surface Ocean and Lower Atmosphere Study—Air-Sea interactions and their climatic and environmental impacts' will be convened by Guiling Zhang, Huiwang Gao, Mohd Talib Latif, Jun Nishioka, Senchao Lai, Bingbing Wang. This session invites submissions that discuss: (1) greenhouse gases and the oceans; (2) air-sea interface and fluxes of gases, particles, microorganisms, and energy; (3) interactions between anthropogenic pollution and marine emissions; (4) atmospheric deposition and ocean biogeochemistry; (5) characteristics of particles and their abilities to form clouds (CCN and IN); (6) interconnections between aerosols, clouds, and marine ecosystems; (7) ocean biogeochemical control on atmospheric chemistry and atmospheric transformations of gases and particles. Studies in the open ocean and coastal waters are all appropriate for this session. Studies focusing on air-sea interaction including marine emissions, atmospheric deposition, chemical transformations of gases and particles, the role of aerosol particles in cloud formation, interactions between anthropogenic pollution with marine emissions, feedbacks from ocean ecosystems, and impacts to environments and climate are of particular interest.

Website here.

Where in the global oceans should spatial and temporal surveys be conducted to discern climatologically-relevant changes in water-column inventories of methane and nitrous oxide?  This is an important question facing oceanographers today. However, attempts to answer this question stimulate many related and relevant queries concerning the production and consumption of methane and nitrous oxide in the ocean. For example, how will their water-column concentrations be influenced by factors such as increasing seawater temperatures, decreasing oxygen concentrations, and changing nutrient loading? Do we have sufficient analytical and observational capacity to conduct robust temporal surveys? Do we sufficiently comprehend the microbial metabolic pathways that produce and consume these two trace gases?

In October 2018, a SOLAS co-sponsored OCB workshop will address these questions to help determine the future directions of methane and nitrous oxide measurements in the global oceans. The workshop builds off a series of global inter-comparison exercises of nitrous oxide and methane. Participation in the workshop is open to everyone and attendees will be decided based on application. All documents including planning papers, agendas, and presentations will be made available from this website over the forthcoming months.

Workshop website here.

The  4th  International Symposium on the Effects of Climate Change on the World Oceans (ECCWO) took place from 2 to 8 June  2018  in Washington DC, USA. SOLAS is one of the sponsors of this event. 

Check the symposium website here, and SOLAS Event Report on this symposium here.

The Surface Ocean CO₂ Atlas (SOCAT) is a synthesis activity for quality-controlled, surface ocean fCO₂ (fugacity of carbon dioxide) observations by the international marine carbon research community (>100 contributors). SOCAT data is publicly available, discoverable and citable. SOCAT enables quantification of the ocean carbon sink and ocean acidification and evaluation of ocean biogeochemical models. SOCAT, which celebrated its 10th anniversary in 2017, represents a milestone in biogeochemical and climate research and in informing policy.

Listening to the calls demanding increased cooperation and communication around low oxygen concentration in the marine environment, IOC-UNESCO initiated an ad hoc network of scientists focused on oxygen in both the open ocean and coastal areas – the Global Ocean Oxygen Network (GO2NE).

IIOE-2 is a major global scientific program which will engage the international scientific community in collaborative oceanographic and atmospheric research from coastal environments to the deep sea over the period 2015-2020, revealing new information on the Indian Ocean (i.e. its currents, its influence upon the climate, its marine ecosystems) which is fundamental for future sustainable development and expansion of the Indian Ocean’s blue economy. Webpage

The mission of the Latin American Ocean Acidification Network (LAOCA) is to communicate and enhance understanding of ocean acidification process in Latin America, and its interaction with other local processes and their impact on marine ecosystems and their services through international cooperation.

The LAOCA network consists of 36 members from 8 Latin American countries: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Mexico and Peru. Developing researchers in Ocean Acidification in 4 main lines of research: Carbonate system chemistry (37%), Modeling (13%), Socio-Ecological Assessment (15%), In turn, these lines of research cover the following environments : Staurino (27%), Coastal (49%), and Oceanic (24%).

Webpage

National Key Scientific Research Project (China), MOST, 2015-2019, leading PI: Minhan Dai

Influenced by land-ocean-atmosphere interactions, coastal ocean carbon cycling is an important component of the Earth's climate system. However, a mechanistic understanding of the coastal ocean carbon cycle remains limited, leading to the unanswered question of why some coastal systems are sources while others are sinks of atmospheric CO2.

As the largest marginal sea of Pacific, the South China Sea (SCS) spans a wide range of latitudinal zones with distinct structures. The northern shelf, which receives land inputs from the Pearl River, can be characterized as a River-Dominated Margin (RioMar) and a CO2 sink to the atmosphere. The SCS basin, which exchanges with the Pacific, is identified as an Ocean-Dominated Margin (OceMar) and a CO2 source.

Built upon the success of a five-year multiple-PI "973" project, CHOICE-C I on ―Carbon cycling in the China Seas - budget, controls and ocean acidification‖, CHOICE-C II focuses on the northern SCS shelf (RiOMar) and the SCS basin (OceMar). Through an integrated study of the carbon cycling between field observations, remote sensing as well as numerical modeling in the SCS with a comparison strategy, CHOICE-C II aims to determine the source and sink terms of atmospheric CO2 and their associated physical-biogeochemical controlling processes. What follows concentrates on the global implications and the future trends of carbon cycling in the SCS.

Four subprojects fall under for CHOICE-C II:
1) Air-sea CO2 flux and its biogeochemical controls in the South China Sea, PI: Minhan Dai, Xiamen University
2) Primary productivity and the carbon cycle in the South China Sea, PI: Delu Pan, The 2nd Institute of Oceanology, SOA
3) Recycling and export of organic carbon and its coupling with nitrogen and silicate in the South China Sea, PI: Hongbin Liu, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology 4) Carbon transport, simulations and future trends in the South China Sea, PIs, Jianyu Hu, Xiamen University and Jianping Gan, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

Webpage

leading PI: Huiwang Gao

leading PI: Guipeng Yang