SimOcean
Simulating and forecasting southern Africa's ocean
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Launch of the Nansen-Tutu Centre for Marine Environmental Research
On 20 May 2010 the Nansen-Tutu Centre for Marine and Environmental Research was signed at Archbishop Desmond Tutu's office.
The Marine Research Institute at the University of Cape Town and the Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Centre in Bergen, Norway, have played an instrumental role in establishing the Nansen-Tutu Centre in Cape Town. The centre offices are hosted at the Department of Oceanography at UCT.
The vision of the centre is to serve Africa through advancing the knowledge of the marine environment and climate system in the spirit of the Nobel Peace Laureates Desmond Tutu and Fridtjov Nansen.
The overall goal is to improve the the capacity to observe, understand and predict marine ecosystem variability on time scales from days to decades in support of scientific and societal needs including fisheries, coastal management, maritime security, recreation and tourism.
The primary research focus of the Nansen-Tutu Centre will be to understand, model and predict conditions in the ocean as the meteorological services do for the weather. SimOcean plays a vital role in developing this capacity and is strongly supported by the Nansen-Tutu Centre.
The Nansen-Tutu Centre is a joint venture between Ma-Re UCT and other members, including the African Centre for Climate and Earth System Science, the Department of Environmental Affairs, the South African Environmental Observation Network, Norwegian partners: the Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Centre, the Institute for Marine Research, the Geophysical Institute at the University of Bergen, and the Geosciences Department at Princeton University in the United States.
To achieve its goal of developing southern African capacity to understand and predict marine ecosystem variability a core activity of the Nansen-Tutu Centre is to facilitate collaboration with its international partners and experts thereby enabling the education and exchange of young researchers and students from different cultures and countries, through the Nansen-Tutu Scholarship Programme.
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