The Western Indian Ocean (WIO, which includes here East African countries and those surrounding the marginal and coastal seas) has more than 60 million people living on its marine coast. The coastal rural communities rely on marine ecosystems as a source of food and livelihood. The ocean economy is also important for countries with foreign income from fisheries, tourism, etc.The WIO is warming rapidly and is a marine “hotspot” for climate change. Extreme weather events (tropical cyclones, heat waves, abnormal monsoons, etc) are becoming more frequent and intense, resulting in the destruction of coastal and marine habitats, ecosystems showing stress and less productivity, hence an impact on fisheries. These in turn will impact people in the region who rely on coastal and marine ecosystems for food security and income. Similarly, biodiversity loss as a consequence of climate change is posing a challenge to the tourism industry in the WIO. Observational data are scarce in the WIO, in particular in the coastal and marginal seas where satellite products and numerical ocean models are limited. Mid- to long-term ocean observation systems are needed to monitor and understand marine processes and to validate satellite derived data and global model outputs for better prediction of day-to-day and future change in marine resources.
A Regional Training Workshop on ‘Observing the Coastal and Marginal Seas in the Western Indian Ocean including the Arabian/Persian Gulf and the Sea of Oman’ in the hybrid format with the proposed date of 7th – 9th June, 2022. The workshop is organised by the CLIVAR/IOC-GOOS Indian Ocean Region Panel (IORP), with the support from Partnership for Observation of the Global Oceans (POGO) and in partnership with ReMoTURB Project from Mozambican Oceanographic Institute (InOM, former IIP) and Nelson Mandela University.
The workshop will be a hybrid format with 3 components taking place simultaneously – physical workshop venues in Maputo, Mozambique, virtual attendance and presentation in Kuwait, and global virtual attendance. This workshop will encourage the countries bordering the WIO (including marginal seas) to be engaged in coastal observing programs and research as effective partners, and will also identify the training needs and capacity building in the participating countries and provide the opportunity for starting countries to learn from others who have already established programs.
The workshop will include the following sessions:
- Overview of the WIO Observing Systems
- Observation Instruments and Platforms in the WIO
- Data access, Analysis and Management
- Observation with Societal Needs
More information here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cjV2THujE_0XAJxhqncFXhjFgwIjJggr/view
- Bernardino Sérgio Malauene, Instituto Nacional de Investigação Pesqueira, Mozambique
- Faiza Yousef Al- Yamani, Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research, Kuwait
- Juliet Hermes, South African Environmental Observation Network, South Africa
- Roxy Mathew Koll, IITM, India
- Jing Li, International CLIVAR Project Office (ICPO), China
Sponsors and Partners
- World Climate Research Programme (WCRP)
- Climate and Ocean: Variability, Predictability and Change (CLIVAR)
- Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS)
- Partnership for Observation of the Global Ocean (POGO)
- Mozambican Oceanographic Institute (InOM, former IIP)
- Nelson Mandela University (NMU)