Indo-Norwegian research school in Operational OceanographyThe winter school Operational Oceanography: Indian Ocean circulation and sea level variation is organized at ESSO-Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS) in Hyderabad during 16-21 October 2016. The winter school is jointly organized and sponsored by Norwegian and Indian partners, including the Nansen Centers in Bergen and Cochin. 30 Indian and international doctoral students will be selected for participation in the winter school. Application for participation is open until 15 August @ INCOIS.

Operational oceanography involves reliable, long-term observations of the world's oceans and coastal waters, rapid interpretation and dissemination of data and generation of products and advisories that can be distributed to users in near real time. The recent advances made in observational technologies in the fields of sensors, platforms and real-time communications now provide capability to observe the oceans in detail. The winter school will focus on two aspects of operational oceanography, including data assimilation i.e. Indian Ocean Circulation and Sea Level Variation. In recent years, the Indian Ocean has been discovered to have large impact on climate variability. Indian Ocean circulation varies differently in several respects from Pacific and Atlantic Ocean. The most striking difference is the seasonal reversal of the monsoon winds and its effects on the ocean currents in the Indian Ocean. Sea levels can be affected by many factors and are known to have varied greatly over geological time scales. The careful measurement of variations in mean sea level can offer insights into on going climate change, and sea level rise has been widely quoted as evidence of on going global warming. With advancement in research and technology, ocean models are capable of providing prediction of ocean state in terms of circulation and hydrography. In recent years, data assimilation methods have been developed and used in many research areas. The first application of data assimilation techniques were in meteorology and today it is a key component of numerical weather forecasts. Data assimilation improves the estimate of the ocean and atmosphere physical state by combining the data from measurements and from dynamic models in an optimal way.

The program

The winter school program covers Monsoon variability at intra-seasonal and inter-annual time scale and its impact on Indian Ocean Circulation, Operational Indian Ocean Circulation and Modelling, Data Assimilation for ocean forecasting, The Nansen-TOPAZ ocean modelling system, Physics of sea level variations and Indian Ocean sea level variation. The full program is available here.

The student participants will be recruited according to experience in and organized into five thematic working groups during the winter school:

• Ocean Modelling
• Data Assimilation
• Sea Level Variation
• Real Time Ocean Observations and
• Forecasting, Applications and Market.

The students will make a report during the course of the winter school. The organizers will follow up the results of the research school and encourage that the students expand and publish their student report in a referee journal after the completion of the winter school. Participating students may also be recruited for further studies and research tasks associated with the topics addressed during the research school.

The host organizations

The winterschool venue: e-classroom @ ITCOcean, INCOISThe winter school is jointly organized and funded by three Indian and two Norwegian partners

• International Training Centre for Operational Oceanography (ITCOocean),
• Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (ESSO-INCOIS),
• Nansen Environmental Research Centre – India (NERCI),
• Nansen Scientific Society and
• Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Centre (NERSC).

The Government of India Ministry of Earth Sciences has approved  and is partly funding the winter school program and cooperation. The winter school is also financillay supported by the Research Council of Norway and will be hosted at the ITCOocean facilities located at ESSO-INCOIS in Hyderabad.

The winter school is announced in the attached brochure and at http://www.incois.gov.in/ITCOocean/iocslv.jsp where you also find a link for application of particpation.