3-6 Nov. 2004, the 2nd National Oceanic Data Assimilation Symposium (ODAS04) was held in Changshu City, Jiangsu Province. Over 40 representatives from 14 research organizations and universities attended the meeting. This symposium was sponsored by the Key Lab of Oceanic Dynamic Processes and Satellite Oceanography (SOA), the Second Institute of Oceanography (SOA), the Institute of Atmospheric Physics (CAS), and the Climate and Environment Committee of Chinese Industrial and Applied Mathematics Association.
The ODAS04 was presided over by Professor Xu Jianping from the Second Institute of Oceanography (SOA), who is the Chief Scientist of China Argo Project. There were 21 papers exchanged in the meeting, which are related to the oceanic data assimilation method, the application of assimilation technology, the global ocean observing system, and the ocean observation data collecting, processing and quality controlling. Among them, there were 11 reports related to Argo data application research (Annex 1), especially to the application results in the operational forecasting system.
This meeting has sufficiently presented the research achievements in the oceanic data assimilation field, particularly in the Argo data application since the first symposium (ODAS03) held October 2003, and also showed the function and situation of Chinese academic society in this new front area. Nearly half of the reports were related to the Argo data, of which showing the developing process of China Argo project and the reward from its data freely distributed nation widely, and also greatly promoting the research activities in the oceanic data application and assimilation. In this sense, this meeting (ODAS04) could be regarded as the first Argo data workshop in China.