We are delighted to announce the official launch of the SOLAS 3.0: 2026–2035 Science Plan and Organisation—a bold new framework charting the next decade of international research at the ocean–atmosphere interface.
Built from strong community input and assembled by over 40 co-authors, the plan is designed to inspire, organise, and provide the community with leverage for ideas that advance SOLAS-related science. The plan is structured around three objectives:
Discovery Science
To achieve a quantitative understanding of the key biogeochemical-physical interactions and feedbacks between the ocean and atmosphere and to establish how this coupled system affects and is affected by Earth’s rapidly changing global climate.
Science Towards Solutions
To leverage expertise and new scientific discoveries relating to air-sea interactions in efforts to inform activities aimed at mitigating or adapting to climate and environmental change and thus improve the assessment of potential outcomes of such efforts on global, regional, and local environmental scales.
Scientific Community and Skill Development
To educate, engage, and connect the next generation of ocean-atmosphere researchers, advocate for equitable access to data and tools, and promote the integration and global coordination of science across the air-sea interface.
Entering its third decade, SOLAS stands at the intersection of science and society. With its expertise in air–sea processes, SOLAS is in an exceptional position to integrate the oceanographic and atmospheric communities and advise on essential mitigation and adaptation strategies.
SOLAS will continue to be guided by its Scientific Steering Committee (SSC), Early Career Scientist Committee (ECSC), national and regional representatives, and International Project Office (IPO), and will call for Task Group proposals to pursue elements of SOLAS 3.0. The Implementation Strategy will be updated regularly on the SOLAS website.
We wish to express our profound gratitude to the co-sponsors of SOLAS — the Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research (SCOR), Future Earth, the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP), and the International Commission on Atmospheric Chemistry and Global Pollution (iCACGP) — for their generous support and commitment. We also gratefully acknowledge the support provided by the State Key Laboratory of Marine Environmental Science (Xiamen University) and the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology to the SOLAS IPO.