Best Practice & Interoperability Experiments Theme Team


Guiding Questions

  1. What near-term activities are needed to develop and promote best practices in air-sea interaction observations?
  2. What near-term activities are needed to ensure that in situ and remotely-sensed air-sea interaction observations are interoperable? and that these observed variables and modelled variables are interoperable? 


Terms of Reference

The benefits of following recognised community best practices are numerous and fundamental to the sustained global ocean observing effort. A best practice is a methodology that has repeatedly produced superior results relative to other methodologies with the same objective. To be fully elevated to a best practice, a promising method will have been reviewed, adopted and employed by multiple organizations#. The OASIS Best Practices (BP) and Interoperability  Task Team (TT) aims to identify, create and promote BP in all areas of air-sea interaction in support of the OASIS goals.

  • Work collaboratively  with OASIS TT, OBPS, GOOS and stakeholders to produce endorsed best practices for OASIS EOVs, ECVs, ECBs, and OASIS methodologies, and activities

    • Catalogue and review BP, identify gaps and areas where a holistic approach across platforms and variables can be taken. Create a review, publication and evaluation process, encourage use of the OceanBestPractices System including Repository, work with OASIS Capacity Building TT to provide training in support of delivering multiplatform datasets of variable that meet the uncertainty specification defined by the OASIS
    • Make a list of priority BP
    • Identify if they are available or need to be created
    • Organise community reviews in collaboration with the authors
    • Update/modify/create BP based on reviews
    • Work with OBPS and GOOS to obtain endorsement and upload onto OBPS
    • Where applicable encourage publication in open-access journals

  • Devise Interoperability Experiments to develop, test and ensure best practices. Examples include:

    • Intercomparison of observations from different platforms
    • Intercomparison of observations and model output
    • Intercomparison of observations and remote sensing data

  • Create a generic OASIS decision tree for Best Practices, including the full range of applications and field conditions that might be part of the OASIS, in conjunction with the OBPS decision tree task team. Field conditions might include power limited or not, ability to customize electronics and/or housing or not, routine maintenance possible or autonomous deployment, stable platform or subject to motion, etc.

  • Draft 1-5 year Actions under the BP theme that would advance OASIS 2030 goals. These Actions will be presented to GOOS, GCOS, WCRP, etc. for inclusion in international implementation plans

  • Engage collaboratively in these Activities

  • Share and integrate vetted outcomes into other Theme Teams (e.g., translating Best Practices into Curriculum that could be used for Capacity Development, ensuring that observations meet the uncertainty specifications needed for the OASIS)

  • Support the OASIS webinar series with webinar panel discussions on BP of decided EVs

  • Hold meetings every 1-2 months to assess progress

Theme Team Membership

Theme Team Leads:   Juliet Hermes, Jack Reeves Eyre, R. Venkatesan,

Current Theme Team Members: J. Hermes, J. Reeves Eyre, R. Venkatesan, N. Anderson, Y. Serra, S. Elipot, T. Farrar, P. Browne, S. Zippel, M. Bourassa, F. Muller-Karger, V. Vitale, D. Zhang, K. Drushka, A. Plueddemann, D. Stanitski, M. Andres, M. Mazloff, A. Rutgersson, U. Schuster, L. Ratnarajah, G. Gerich, C. Gentemann, L. Riihimaki, J. Edson, H. Zhang, A. Stoffelen

Staff Support: Cassie Wilson

Open membership — join here!