On May 5^th GSOP organized a teleconference to plan its activities for the year. The meeting was chaired by Peter Oke and Steven Jayne, and had the participation of several GSOP members; and there were special presentations from Narelle van der Wel (briefing on the WCRP LHAs), Yosuke Fujii (presentation on OceanPredict OSEval Task Team), Susann Tegtmeier (briefing on the WCRP Core Project, “Earth System Modelling and Data Capabilities”), Peter Oke (Argo for ocean forecasting/reanalysis), and Steve Jayne (GSOP engagement with the WCRP’s sea-level challenge).

The presentations about the WCRP activities were a nice introduction, and the group will think in the future how it can meaningfully engage. There is a larger effort around the WCRP sea level challenge, so GSOP will also look on ways to be part of that. There are also good synergies to exploit with the OceanPredict OSEval Task Team. Yosuke described their plans under the Ocean Decade and described the regular virtual meetings they hold. These meetings are open, details are can be found here: https://oceanpredict.org/science/task-team-activities/observing-system-evaluation/#section-online-meetings. There was also a positive response to the Argo-GSOP-OceanPredict presentation.

GSOP aims to meet three times a year virtually, and once face-to-face. Under the current state of the world, the face-to-face probably won’t happen, so the group will go ahead and start planning a virtual workshop for late this calendar year. They will also try to schedule a time for our next virtual meeting soon.

There was also discussion on panel membership rotation for next year, this will be continued in subsequent meetings.