The decadal SOCCO science plan focuses on the hypothesis that fine-scale ocean dynamics are key to understanding the role of the Southern Ocean in global century-scale trends of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) and regional climate change. Effectively, large-scale climate is driven by the small-scale ocean physics. We use this scale sensitivity approach to understand contemporary variability and project century-scale evolution of carbon fluxes and ocean productivity that will help constrain climate risk and associated societal challenges of the 21st century.

SOCCO demonstrates that programme-scale planning and funding are highly effective ways of addressing the value chain that enables basic science to translate into societal impact through:

• An end-to-end Human Capital Development (HCD) platform;
• Technological and methodological innovation; and
• A technological innovation system.
   

Our approach to capabilities is defined by three main angles that link the science to societal benefits through models, long-term observations and data products:

• Advancing observational-based constraints for models; 
• Advancing models and modelling; and
• Advancing process understanding through large experiments and model parameterisation.

The programme is organised into three primary research themes, where the implementation details are provided through work packages:

• Theme 1: CO2 and ocean physics;
• Theme 2: Biological carbon pump and ocean physics; and 
• Theme 3: Long-term observations; models and observational facilities. 

Project outputs

SOCCO outputs can be divided into five primary categories:
 

Research

SOCCO scientific research is achieved by its contribution to topically relevant high-impact international publications (the average publication rate over the last 10 years is seven papers per year, with an average impact factor of 3.8).

HCD

SOCCO prioritises both excellence and transformation and contributes to the national science, engineering and technology capability by producing highly capable and internationally competitive marine science MSc and PhD graduates, with numerical and technical skills in support of both economic and social development. SOCCO also seeks to consolidate emerging South African expertise in the domain by transitioning graduating PhD students into postdoctoral fellowship positions that can fill the skills needs in the government and private sector.

Data 

SOCCO primarily produces three types of data, namely long-term in situ observations towards global (SOCAT) and national products; global machine learning-based observational products (e.g. CSIR-ML6) for ocean CO2 fluxes and global carbon budget calculations; and in situ experiments towards understanding ecosystem dynamics.

Technology and innovation

SOCCO’s contribution to technology and innovation manifests in its contribution to the development of the South African Earth System Model (a partnership with Wits University Global Change Institute); continued technological leadership in ocean robotics and sensor development and commercialisation; and software development, such as GliderTools for the standardisation of processing glider data.

Science-Policy

SOCCO contributes to both the local and international science-policy interface around ocean and climate. For example, through contributions to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change special report on the ocean and WG1 of the 6th Assessment Report. In addition, SOCCO provides long-term observations, reconstruction products and robust model projections in support of the Global Carbon Budget towards evidence-based policy formulation.