As research activities on ocean acidification continue to develop, there is a growing need for international collaboration and coordination. In response to this need, the Ocean Acidification International Coordination Centre (OA-ICC) of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was launched in 2012. Operated by the IAEA Environment Laboratories in Monaco, the project is supported by several IAEA Member States as well as international projects, including SOLAS, the Integrated Marine Biogeochemistry and Ecosystem Research (IMBER) and the EU MedSeA project.
The OA-ICC is working internationally to promote overarching activities that serve the scientific community and science users, namely policymakers, media, and the general public. Among these activities, the OA-ICC is helping to establish an international observing network, to promote international cooperation on data sharing and data management, to stimulate collaboration between natural, economic and social sciences, to facilitate recommendations for best practices, to build technical capacities in developing countries, and to communicate science to scientists and non-scientists.
Here are three of its recent science products:
• the OA-ICC news stream informs scientists of recent publications, media coverage, meeting announcements, and jobs (www.news-oceanacidification-icc.org)
• the OA-ICC data compilation on the biological response to ocean acidification provides easy access to regularly updated published experimental data (http://tinyurl.com/oaicc-data)
• the OA-ICC bibliographic database currently holds more than 2000 references and includes citations, abstracts and keywords (http://tinyurl.com/oaicc-biblio)
The OA-ICC is also launching intercomparisons, the first of which has resulted in a recent publication that compares publicly available software to compute carbonate chemistry, a collaboration with the International Ocean Carbon Coordination Project (IOCCP) and the EU CARBOCHANGE project.
Lina Hansson, OA-ICC Project Officer, IAEA, Principality of Monaco (L.Hansson(at)iaea.org, http://www.iaea.org/ocean-acidification)
Hansson, L., 2014. Ocean Acidification International Coordination Centre (OA-ICC). Solas News. 016: 17. Article.
