SOUTHERN OCEAN SENTINEL: REPORT OF THE FIRST INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP IN 2009

The first international workshop on implementing a Southern Ocean Sentinel program was held at the CCAMLR Headquarters in Hobart in April 2009. The conclusions of that workshop are provided to WG-EMM for consideration along with an overview, the program and abstracts of the keynote presentations. A report of the workshop will be submitted to the Scientific Committee for its considerations in October 2009, including discussion on the following questions: A key conclusion of the workshop was that the Sentinel program could start now with qualitative assessments of current and future climate change impacts on Southern Ocean marine ecosystems and work towards a quantitative assessment of impacts by 2014. This process will fill an important gap in current discussions on climate change impacts on marine ecosystems by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It will also assist CCAMLR in addressing climate change impacts on the conservation of Antarctic marine living resources. Another key conclusion of the workshop is that it should be possible to identify indicators of climate change impacts in the Southern Ocean that these could be used as early warning indicators of future change in both the Southern Ocean and elsewhere in the world. Importantly for CCAMLR, work in designing such a system should be complementary with developmental work being undertaken in the CCAMLR Ecosystem Monitoring Program. CCAMLR Members are invited to participate in the qualitative and quantitative assessments of current and future climate change impacts on the Southern Ocean marine ecosystems as well participating in designing and implementing an early-warning system to identify imminent climate change impacts on global ecosystem services.