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NOAA and International Partners Participate in Fourth Indian Ocean Capacity Building Workshop

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The Fourth WMO/IOC Data Buoy Cooperation Panel (DBCP) Western Indian Ocean Capacity Building Workshop will be hosted by Tanzania’s Meteorological Agency (TMA) and Institute for Marine Sciences (IMS) on April 29-May 3, 2013, in Zanzibar, Tanzania. The working goal of the workshop is to demonstrate the socio-economic value and benefits of new Indian Ocean Observing systems, such as the Research Moored Array for African-Asian-Australian Monsoon Analysis and Prediction (RAMA) for reducing disaster risk such as from droughts and floods, managing fisheries, and improving predictive capacity for the Western Indian Ocean States. NOAA contributors will include representatives from the Climate Program Office and National Weather Service’s National Data Buoy Center (NDBC) and Climate Prediction Center (CPC).

In addition to technical training on observations and modeling, highlights of the workshop will include the keynote address by the Republic of Tanzania’s Minister of Environment and Mineral Resources who will discuss actions to mitigate piracy in the region, which was one of the goals included in the African Ministerial Conference on Meteorology (AMCOMET) Nairobi Declaration. A long-term scientific work program and an associated capacity building and training road map will also be adopted at the workshop. Another highlight of this year’s Capacity Building Workshop will be the deployment of a wave glider in the open Western Indian Ocean for six months to obtain ocean and weather data. These data have not been obtained for many years due to Piracy.

In exchange for contributions to this year’s training workshop, NOAA is receiving twenty-two gratis ship days on the Research Vessel Algoa for the deployment and servicing of NOAA’s Western Indian Ocean RAMA moorings. This is one of the terms per the Memorandum of Agreement NOAA signed with the United Nations Development Program’s Agulhas-Somali Current Large Marine Ecosystem Project two years earlier at the Second Western Indian Ocean Capacity Building Workshop. Later in the year, a similar ‘resource-sharing’ partnership meeting will be held in Hangzhou, China in July to demonstrate the use of ocean observations to improve Typhoon intensity and track forecasts for the North Pacific Ocean and Marginal Seas NPOMS-2.

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