FAIRSEAS Workshop Summary Report: The Future of Internationally Coordinated Air-Sea Interactions Research

The 2026 FAIRSEAS workshop, convened at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh by SOLAS, OASIS, and CLIVAR, sought to define a coordinated international strategy for air-sea interactions research over the coming decade. Air-sea interactions regulate weather, climate, carbon cycling, and elemental exchange at the ocean-atmosphere interface, yet critical gaps persist: insufficient observations of heat, gas, and aerosol fluxes in the air-sea transition zone; limited understanding of extreme events and small-scale processes such as bubbles, sea spray, and microlayer physics; persistent mismatches between observational scales and model resolution; and under-sampled regions including the Southern Ocean, tropical Pacific, and polar areas. The workshop's 59 participants — spanning academia, government, and nonprofits, with 26 early-career researchers — recommended a shift from regional to process- and regime-based science, development of minimum global observation standards, stronger co-design between in situ, remote sensing, and modelling communities, and expanded use of machine learning and digital twins. Strategic priorities for 2026–2028 include establishing a formal SOLAS-OASIS-CLIVAR coordination mechanism, preparing community outputs for OceanObs'29, creating open FAIR-compliant data repositories, and building sustained early-career engagement across underrepresented regions. Consistent flux terminology for extremes and transition-zone processes was identified as an urgent need for effective communication with policymakers and the public.

Reference: Marandino, C. A., Wilson, C., Rickard, P. C., et al. (2026). FAIRSEAS Workshop Summary Report: The Future of Internationally Coordinated Air-Sea Interactions Research. 2026 FAIRSEAS EuroMarine Foresight Workshop. https://doi.org/10.5065/n4sm-9405