Grandest Idea of All:

Theory of Change

Guiding Questions

  1. Who are your partners & stakeholders? What partnerships could OASIS help foster?
  2. How can OASIS help make data more FAIR? What toolboxes? Products are needed?
  3. What emerging best practices are needed?

Task Team Leadership

Theme Team Leads: Marie Boye (IPGP), Lucia Gutiérrez-Loza (ECOP; NORCE) and Charles Addey (ECOP, U. of Hawaii)

Program Office Support: info@airseaobs.org

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Terms of Reference

The Grandest Idea of All: Theory of Change is meant to serve as a bridge binding together Grand Ideas 1-3 with the aim of co-designing an ideal and fit-for-purpose global observing system. Through capacity strengthening, developing best practices and promoting a culture of mentorship and partnership, the OASIS Theory of Change team seeks to tackle the challenges of measuring air-sea fluxes.

  • Partnership and capacity strengthening: seeking to promote effective global and regional coordination on observing and modeling air-ocean interactions, including through information exchange, capacity development, and enhanced engagement of stakeholders at global, regional and national levels. OASIS Theory of Change can serve as a connector between scientific, policy, and stakeholder communities, facilitating the adoption of air-sea interaction observations for societal benefits.
  • Best practices and interoperability: promoting the development of best practices for air-sea interaction observations towards endorsement and wide-spread adoption and supporting interoperability.
  • Findable-Accessible-Interoperable-and-Reusable (FAIR) data, models and products: working towards open and FAIR air-sea interaction information.

Meetings:

  • The co-leads of the OASIS Theory of Change team meet every three months. The co-leads will participate in meetings of the partnership and capacity strengthening, best practices and FAIR data task teams.

Terms of Reference:

  • Outreach to modelling and forecasting communities to integrate their expertise and participation into the OASIS discussion.
  • Assess how well current observational networks address these needs and provide recommendations for future observational campaigns.
  • Share and integrate outcomes into other Theme Teams.
  • Work collaboratively with those communities, in synergy with other OASIS Theme teams, stakeholders and end-users, to better understand their observational needs with regards to air-sea interaction EOVs.
  • Development of a robust framework to facilitate process-based studies in the above communities.

Objectives

  • Work collaboratively with OASIS Grand Ideas 1–3, OBPS, GOOS and other members of the community and stakeholders to:

    ○ Identify gaps in terms of best practices and methodologies for FAIR data, as well as capacity building needs by the air-sea interaction community including students, researchers, technical staff and beyond.

    ○ Produce and endorse recommended practices for OASIS EOVs, ECVs, ECBs.

    ○ Organise community reviews to promote further development and update of existing methodologies for best practices and FAIR data.

    ○ Work with OBPS and GOOS to obtain endorsement of best practices and upload onto OBPS system

    ○ Identify critical assumptions, risks, and enablers necessary for achieving these outcomes.

  • Promote collaboration between task teams. [e.g. linking task team members (BP, FAIR data and Capacity building) around individual topics/variables based on a list of priorities].

  • Establish mechanisms to monitor progress and evaluate the impact of the task teams’ activities within the ToC framework.

  • Support/organise interoperability experiments of different platforms, in-situ obs vs satellites, models, etc.

  • Address uncertainties in air-sea interaction observations

  • Develop educational curriculum: develop curricula for learners, from children to graduate students to mariners. Additionally, workshops, short courses and mentoring programs will be initiated, providing support and long-term learning opportunities for the air-sea interactions community.

  • Keep OASIS relevant/visible within the community by organizing/participating in activities (e.g. OBPS workshop sessions every October, EGU/AGU, etc.).

  • Produce a capacity building strategy that enables developing nations to actively participate in and benefit from local-to-global air-sea interaction observations.

  • Develop a strategy for assessing interoperability of surface observing platforms.

  • Build community and capacity for using, operating and developing air-sea interaction observational platforms that allow collaborative partnerships.

  • In the short term, increase visibility, standardize practices, and enhance capacity. In the long term,contribute to improving global climate and ocean forecasting models.

Deliverables

  • Theory of Change Framework: Inputs, activities, outputs, outcomes, and long-term impacts, with associated success indicators.

  • Annual Progress Reports: Summary of the team’s progress, challenges, and recommendations for adjustments.