The First International AtlantOS Symposium took place at the UNESCO and IOC headquarters in Paris from 25 to 28 March. The event marked the transition from an EU-funded project to an international programme, the All-Atlantic Ocean Observing System.
170 participants from 29 countries and many pan-European initiatives expressed a joint will to further integration, data aggregation and societal awareness of the ocean in the Earth system. High-level speakers from the UNESCO and IOC, the European Parliament, the UN Environment, several heads of oceanographic institutes and funding agencies, national ministries across the Atlantic, dialogued with the AtlantOS science and oceanography community as well as ocean industries, tech developers and international NGOs on how to work ahead. The European Commission congratulated the community on generating a strong science and policy momentum around the All-Atlantic ocean observing and called for urgent actions to realize the objectives of the integrated system.
EuroGOOS was strongly involved in both the programme and the organization of the event. Glenn Nolan and Erik Buch delivered several talks, including on the European strategy for the All-Atlantic ocean observing, the European Ocean Observing System (EOOS), and the connectivity and partnerships across the GOOS regions (of which EuroGOOS represents Europe) and with broader communities. Dina Eparkhina was on the programme committee of the symposium’s stakeholder day, co-chaired by Zdenka Willis, President-Elect of the US Marine Technology Society, and Mathieu Belbeoch, Head of JCOMMSOPS (joint IOC-WMO commission on oceanography and meteorology). Vicente Fernández was rapporteur for the session on Regional and Coastal Specificities and presented the AtlantOS web data dashboard developed by EuroGOOS with JCOMMOPS and EMODnet.
The event presented the AtlantOS Paris Declaration and looked ahead to the international OceanObs ’19 conference on 16-20 September – the global decadal event which comes at a critical time to deliver consolidated ocean observing inputs to the UN Ocean Decade.
The AtlantOS programme website is under development. Further information about the AtlantOS project is here.
