“Our common future ocean in a changing climate” joint session of the H2020 projects COMFORT and TRIATLAS coordinated by UiB formed part of the Day Zero event of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) conference. The aim of the session was to provide fundamental knowledge on how to achieve SDG14 Life under water and SDG13 Climate action through international partnership of 57 institutes from 21 countries and to discuss how we, as scientists as society, can work together to achieve the SDGs. The session attracted a broad audience with a great number of students, non-scientists and non-specialists from outside of academia.
The event consisted of three major parts:
1) Two presentations: “Ocean under climate change” by Christoph Heinze focusing on the ocean acidification, warming and de-oxygenation and “Forecasting the ocean from temperature to fish” by Filippa Fransner focusing on climate predictions.
2) Enthusiastically received interactive quiz/poll with questions such as “What fraction of human-made carbon dioxide emissions does the ocean take up each year?” or “Why is climate prediction possible?”
3) Audience engaging panel discussion consisting of the Bjerkenss Centre for Climate Research experts: Are Olsen (moderator, UiB), Morten Skogen (IMR), Helene Langehaug (NERSC), Filippa Franser (UiB), Christoph Heinze (UiB) covered questions such as: “The SDGs are aimed to be achieved within the end of this decade. This is the time horizon of climate prediction models. Can they help to show us whether we are on the right track to achieve the SDGs?” or “We have the knowledge, and we have a global framework with quantified goals, nevertheless, in effect, nothing has been done. CO2 emissions are still rising. Why does the change take so much time?”
