Background
This workshop will be the latest in a series of international marine workshops held approximately every two years since 1999. The earlier meetings were: the First Workshop on Advances in Marine Climatology (CLIMAR99) (WMO, 2003); the First International Workshop on Advances in the Use of Historical Marine Climate Data (MARCDAT-I) (Diaz et al., 2002) and the Joint WMO/IOC Commission on Oceanography and Marine Meteorology (JCOMM) Second Workshop on Advances in Marine Climatology (CLIMAR-II) (Parker et al., 2004). These workshops have brought together a wide spectrum of marine data users, and managers of marine data and products, and have included an underlying focus on the continuing evaluation, utilization, and improvement of the International Comprehensive Ocean-Atmosphere Data Set (ICOADS). In addition to a number of published outcomes, the previous workshops have produced and actively tracked a consolidated set of Past Recommendations to help guide the work of this group and provide feedback for the broader research community.

References
Diaz, H., C. Folland, T. Manabe, D. Parker, R. Reynolds, and S. Woodruff, 2002: Workshop on Advances in the Use of Historical Marine Climate Data. WMO Bulletin, 51(4), 377-380.

Parker, D., E. Kent, S. Woodruff, D. Dehenauw, D.E. Harrison, T. Manabe, M. Meitus, V. Swail, and S. Worley, 2004: The Second JCOMM Workshop on Advances in Marine Climatology (CLIMAR-II). WMO Bulletin, 53(2), 157-159.

WMO, 2003: Proceedings of CLIMAR99-WMO Workshop on Advances in Marine Climatology (Vancouver, Canada, 8-15 September 1999). WMO/TD-No. 1062 (JCOMM Technical Report No. 13), World Meteorological Organization, Geneva-CD-ROM.