International experts, policy makers and, regional representatives (including SPREPs PI Global Ocean Observing System Officer) met this month for the 2nd Tropical Pacific Observing System (TPOS) 2020 Resource Forum at the East-West Center at the University of Hawaii. TPOS was established in the 1980s following the first ever El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) event and is intended to improve ENSO and seasonal forecasting for the tropical Pacific and areas impacted by ENSO. TPOS is the largest ocean observing platform in the Pacific, and is made up of the Tropical Moored Array, Argo profiling floats, surface drifting floats, and shipboard and satellite measurements. The TPOS-2020 project is a once in a generation project launched in 2014 with the goal of rethinking and redesigning TPOS to meet the observational, experimental, and operational needs of today and the future.
The Resource Forum is tasked with assisting the project Steering Committee on mapping out the way forward for the redesigned of TPOS, including resourcing needs. Forum participants reviewed the recommendations of the first report and recommendations from the technical working groups and made specific recommendations for next steps to be taken by the Forum, the Steering Committee and the technical working groups, which is reflected in the TPOS-2020 Resource Forum Honolulu Declaration (to be published in the coming weeks).
For more information contact Tommy Moore: [email protected]
The proposed redesign of TPOS. Areas in red indicate the Tropical Moored Array (TMA) moorings and areas in blue indicate enhanced Argo float coverage. For more information see Figure 7-2 of the First Report of TPOS-2020, available at http://tpos2020.org/.