The 16th business meeting of the Southern Ocean Region Panel (SORP) was held on September 23rd and 25th 2025 in hybrid mode, with part of the participants attending from Bali at the pan-CLIVAR meeting.
SORP co-chairs, Ariaan Purich and Carolina Dufour, provided an overview of the panel mission, objectives, and activities. This was followed by a round table of introductions of panel members presenting their expertise and activities outside of SORP allowing to map out potential links to develop with other panels and synergies with ongoing projects or initiatives. SORP operations were then discussed, including communications within SORP, recruitement of new members and replacement of co-chair Ariaan Purich. The rest of the meeting was organized in two sessions to review ongoing SORP activities and propose new ones. The discussions reinforced the interest within the panel to lead some efforts toward observing system simulation experiments (OSSE). SORP has been leading an observing system design effort focused on cross-shelf heat exchange using virtual Argo float release experiments to inform the sampling requirements needed to constrain ocean heat transport toward the Antarctic Ice Sheet. New OSSE activities would be focussed on biogeochemistry and aim to highlight what could be gained from new observations, and in contrast, what could be lost from reduced observations in a context of budget cuts.
The last day, SORP co-organized a cross-panel meeting with two other CLIVAR panels, the Northern Oceans Region Panel (NORP) and the Ocean Model Development Panel (OMDP) which featured two presentations, one by Angélique Melet (OMDP) on the CLIVAR OMDP/RIfS CORDEX Task Team on Regional Ocean Climate Projections and one by Gokhan Danabasoglu (OMDP) on the Ocean Model Intercomparison Project (OMIP). These two sessions which should have been followed by a discussion on joint activities between the three panels was interrupted by a small earthquake that forced onsite participants to evacuate the building. SORP committed to continue the discussions with NORP and OMDP to plan activities.
SORP meets regularly online but acknowledges the value of in-person meetings to foster discussions and exchanges. The 16th SORP business meeting allowed the panel to tighten links among its members and initiate new activities.
The last day, SORP co-organized a cross-panel meeting with two other CLIVAR panels, the Northern Oceans Region Panel (NORP) and the Ocean Model Development Panel (OMDP) which featured two presentations, one by Angélique Melet (OMDP) on the CLIVAR OMDP/RIfS CORDEX Task Team on Regional Ocean Climate Projections and one by Gokhan Danabasoglu (OMDP) on the Ocean Model Intercomparison Project (OMIP). These two sessions which should have been followed by a discussion on joint activities between the three panels was interrupted by a small earthquake that forced onsite participants to evacuate the building. SORP committed to continue the discussions with NORP and OMDP to plan activities.
SORP meets regularly online but acknowledges the value of in-person meetings to foster discussions and exchanges. The 16th SORP business meeting allowed the panel to tighten links among its members and initiate new activities.
