The Large-scale climate variability in Antarctica and the Southern Ocean over decades to centuries, and links to extra-polar climate workshop was held from March 24 to 26, 2015, at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, in La Jolla, USA. The workshop was sponsored by PAGES – Past Global Changes, the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP), the Polar Climate Predictability Initiative (PCPI), and the Climate and Cryosphere Project (CliC). The CliC International Project Office also provided logistical support to the meeting organizers and participants.
The objective of the workshop was to study changes in large-scale patterns of Antarctic climate variability over the last decades to centuries and the extrapolar-polar connections by combining proxy records, historical data, modern instrumental records and model results.
The workshop was attended by 30 international scientists, including early career scientists. Participants were drawn from the atmosphere, ocean, sea ice and modeling communities, with expertise in satellite, observational, historical and palaeoclimate data, and modelling.
A major outcome of the meeting was agreement among participants of the value of cross-disciplinary, inter-disciplinary work, and that the participation of many scientists involved in PAGES2K is indispensable for interdisciplinary comparisons such as this, with a recommendation of more support for this type of joint activity. Other conclusions were for working towards obtaining data for oceanic areas in the Southern Hemisphere, namely imaging, digitization and processing of meteorological observations from ships’ logbooks, and for development of new proxies such as cold corals and mollusks.
Another outcome was concrete plans for a review paper, diagrams were decided upon, and these are now in progress. Additionally, new links for collaborative research were established, which will be monitored/followed up by the organisers.
The workshop report and presentations are now available online.