Invitation of proposals for the forthcoming Indian Scientific Expedition to Southern Ocean 2023

Background 

Southern Ocean (SO) is a unique region which tends to have a global scientific relevance in terms of its role in climate change, its distinct physical, chemical properties and the related biological processes. In the light of the biogeochemical perspective, the SO in general and the Indian sector of the SO (ISSO) in particular, is still an understudied region. With the existing knowledge of SO it is quite impractical to derive any conclusion that can be useful for scientific understanding or societal benefits. Hence, a long term continuous study needs to be planned and executed on all interdisciplinary areas so as to obtain comprehensive understanding of the ISSO as well as it‟s influence on Tropical Indian Ocean (TIO) and climate. As seen from available literature the studies that have been carried out in the ISSO are sparse; whereas most of the studies in the ISSO are confined to the Australian and African sectors. Long term monitoring in the ISSO would facilitate better understanding of the interactions between polar, subtropics, and tropics regions which would help us explaining the role of various processes occurring in the ISSO ecosystem in global climate change. 

In order to understand the processes those are involved in modulating the climate variability in a regional as well as global scale and its implications on the living resources and biogeochemical cycles, Indian SO research program was initiated in 2004. This program was initiated by the Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES) to pursue multi-disciplinary, multi-institutional research activities addressing various key scientific components including air-sea interactions, lower atmospheric processes, hydrodynamics, biogeochemistry, biodiversity (bacteria, plankton and higher marine organisms) etc. Since its inception in 2004, National Centre for Polar and Ocean Research (NCPOR) is the national nodal agency for planning, coordinating and executing the Indian Scientific Expedition to Southern Ocean (ISESO). Till date 11 expeditions are being carried out addressing some of the above mentioned research components. The results obtained from theses expeditions are quite encouraging as they provided some significant data/information on various physical, biological and biogeochemical processes occurring across the various frontal zones in the SO. However, the information gathered from these expeditions are not sufficient to establish the influence of SO on global climate and also at what extent the SO processes respond to or drive climate variability. This underscores the need for sustained observations from the SO to understand the physical and biogeochemical processes responsible for climate variability.

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Last Date to submit Application - 10th July 2022