Report on SORP activities Sept 2015 to June 2016

The SORP has been very active since its last panel meeting in September 2015 (access the meeting report here) with extensive participation in international research coordination and collaboration with several relevant programmes, including the Southern Ocean Observing System (SOOS), the Ocean Observations Panel for Climate (OOCP), the Polar Prediction Project (PPP) and the Polar Climate Predictability Initiative. The panel has a new co-chair (Inga Smith) and one new member (Riccardo Farneti).
 
The SORP has organized sessions at several internal conferences including the SCAR 2016 Open Science Conference (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia ; August 2016) and the CLIVAR Open Science Conference (Qingdao, China; September 2016); and is also co-sponsoring a Townhall meeting on “Ocean-Cryosphere Interactions” at the CLIVAR Open Science Conference. The panel is presently helping to organize a Polar Prediction Workshop in Bremerhaven, Germany (March 2017) co-sponsored by the Polar Climate Predictability Initiative (WCRP-PCPI), the Polar Prediction Project (WWRP-PPP), and the Sea Ice Prediction Network (ARCUS-SIPN). Over the past six months the panel was represented at several international workshops, including the US Polar Research Board Antarctic Sea-Ice workshop in Boulder Colorado (John Fyfe and Lynne Talley; January, 2016), the Ozone and Climate Project (OCP) workshop in Boston Massachusetts (John Fyfe; June 2016) and the International Workshop on Coupled Modeling of Polar Environments in Columbus, Ohio (François Massonnet and Ben Galton-Fenzi; June 2016). The SORP has developed a template to maximize input from national reports, and has strengthen coordination of national representatives between SOOS and SORP (Inga Smith). The SORP has been actively promoting and strengthening ties with SOOS (Lynne Tally).
 
The SORP has reported out to several sponsoring and related organizations such as SOOS (Lynne Tally ; San Diego, May 2016), the Ocean Observations Panel for Climate (OOCP; Katsuro Katsumata; Esporles, Majorca, April 2016); May 2016), the Polar Prediction Project (PPP) Steering Group (François Massonnet) and the CliC Scientific Steering Group (Kenny Matsuoka, February 2016, Copenhagen).