SOCCO releases its Phase IV Integrated Science and Innovation Strategy: 2022-2027

In March this year the Southern Ocean Carbon-Carbon Observatory (SOCCO) research programme based at the CSIR Smart Society, Holistic Climate Change Division released their Phase IV Integrated Science and Innovation Strategy: 2022-2027. More than a decade ago, the important (yet drastically understudied) role of the Southern Ocean in global climate was recognised, which together with South Africa’s comparative geographic advantage made a compelling argument to initiate a South African programme to study the Southern Ocean carbon – climate system. SOCCO is now a well established research programme in support of the Department of Science and Innovation’s Decadal and Strategic Plans to strengthen South Africa’s impact as a global citizen with a clear commitment to ocean and climate stewardship. 

The Southern Ocean acts as the climate flywheel of the planet buffering the impacts of climate change by accounting for 50% of the total oceanic uptake of carbon dioxide and 75% of the excess heat generated by anthropogenic carbon dioxide. This large-scale negative feedback to climate change is achieved through effective physical-solubility and biological carbon pumps that reduce the build-up of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and thus reduce the negative impact of increased radiative forcing. However, the scientific challenge is that the Southern Ocean accounts for most of the uncertainty in global estimates of both contemporary and end of the century projections and it is not known how the Southern Ocean carbon-climate system will respond to different greenhouse gas emission and mitigation scenarios. Understanding the sensitivity of the Southern Ocean to climate change and being able to predict long term trends and tipping points in the ocean carbon – climate system is set to become one of the most important scientific and policy challenges of the 21^st century. From a policy viewpoint it can impact on the calculation of the remaining carbon budgets for greenhouse gas emissions to maintain an agreed warming threshold as well as the pricing of carbon. From a scientific perspective it poses a challenge to improving the confidence in century scale projections of climate risk by Earth System Models.  Finally it provides a unique platform from which to build the skills, innovation and transformation that South Africa will need for decision making in the 21^st Century.

One of the key goals of SOCCO’s Phase IV strategy is to demonstrate that programme-scale planning and funding can not only link the value chain from basic science to societal impact in technological innovation and policy, but also to serve as a technological innovation system and an end-to-end Human Capital Development platform. SOCCO uses the scientific challenges of the Southern Ocean carbon-climate system to attract excellent young South Africans to produce a new generation of graduates with the skills required to address the challenges of the 21^st century. SOCCO builds capabilities through earth science, big data, robotics, computer science and technical engineering which are all essential for the future digital world that requires a skilled and capable workforce for a knowledge based economy and knowledge society.

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SOCCO Phase IV builds on its science, innovation and human capital development trajectory through alignment of both national and international strategic priorities that frame and inform the science and innovation direction of SOCCO Phase IV (Figure 2). In so doing, the innovation potential, research enterprise, scientific knowledge and human capital development that SOCCO generates is at the epicentre of national development and embedded in the necessity for social impact (Figures 1 and 2). 

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SOCCO have adopted a niche approach to address the challenge of understanding the role of the Southern Ocean in global and regional climate which is to address the system through the lens of the seasonal cycle. This niche approach is underpinned by a need to resolve fine scale ocean dynamics that  are key to understanding the variability of air-sea fluxes of carbon dioxide and heat. Addressing the relevant time and space scales that link physical forcing mechanisms associated with climate change to ocean physical and ecosystem responses requires innovative fine-scale observations (ocean robotics and satellite remote sensing) and innovative modelling techniques (prognostic and empirical) that can be used together to link the temporal and spatial scale gaps in our knowledge of a hitherto under sampled Southern Ocean.