Deep Water variability in the subpolar North Atlantic

mesoscale ocean variability WOCE young investigator workshop WOCE CLIVAR GOOS/GCOSA number of meetings over the past months have demonstrated the clear transition that is now going on from the undoubted success of WOCE to the broader new WCRP project CLIVAR and ultimately towards a new concept for most researchers-sustained activities needed to provide operational observations (and modelling) of the ocean.This transition is evident in the content and outcome of a series of meeting that have been held in the past 2 months.The WOCE SSG met in La Jolla, California, in mid-October.The venue gave the SSG a chance to hear at first hand about the activities of the WOCE Hydrographic Programme Office that is compiling the WOCE One-Time and Repeat Hydrography into a readily available, high quality data set.The report of the SSG meeting is about to be published.The following are action items that you should be immediately aware of.It is planned to produce a series of hard copy (and electronic) atlases of WOCE hydrographic data to be freely available to researchers and libraries.The production is already partially funded but additional funding is being sought.If anyone knows of organisations that are likely to be receptive to bids for the printing of the Atlases please let me know.The SSG was happy with the progress of the WOCE workshops -a report of the N. Atlantic one and the announcement of the variability/representativeness one are in this issue.Planning will start for a global workshop on oceanic fluxes in 2001 and consideration is being given to holding one on bottom-induced mixing.page 2