Co-designing sustained observations for the Agulhas Current: The full value chain from researchers to end users

The Agulhas Current is the most powerful, yet least well-studied, western boundary current in the Southern Hemisphere. It is a conduit of warm tropical Indian Ocean water to the cold South Atlantic and has a direct influence on regional and global weather and climate systems. However, to effectively monitor this boundary current system, and to provide supporting information to intermediary users, a sustained, co-designed operational ocean observing system needs to be developed, implemented and sustained in the long-term. This requires workshops and stakeholder engagements to determine key observational needs, a dedicated means of funding to implement and maintain such an ocean observing system, technical and logistical support systems, data management and use of such data in models and end user tools. Within the GOOS Co-Design Ocean Observing Programme, the Boundary Current exemplar has actively worked to engage intermediary and end users to understand the key observational regions and processes within the Agulhas Current and begin work on designing the backbone ocean observing system to attract sustained regional and international funding. This work is pivotal to ensure the observations made benefit both the larger research and operational communities, such as weather and climate forecasting, but also end users such as fisheries, shipping and port authorities, maritime search and rescue and the communities who live along the coast adjacent to the Agulhas Current.