IFOP Researchers Recognized on the 97th Anniversary of the Naval Meteorological Service (SERVIMET).
April 7th, 2025
In the framework of the 97th Anniversary of the Naval Meteorological Service (SERVIMET), Commander Gonzalo Concha, head of the service, gave a speech noting that it is a day to remember March 31, 1928, when the President of the Republic, General Carlos Ibáñez del Campo, signed Supreme Decree 682, which organized the operation of the Meteorological Service, under the Directorate of Maritime Territory.
In this ceremony, attended by naval authorities and representatives of public services as well as universities, IFOP was recognized through the work of researchers Andrés Varas and Hernán Reyes (DOMA) as representatives of an inter-institutional cooperative effort to expand the coverage of meteorological data collection, ensuring its scientific quality and availability for the Navy and IFOP.
This cooperation arose from the need to collect meteorological data to study the impacts of ENSO (La Niña/El Niño) events and climate change on national ecosystems and, consequently, on fishery resources, through observations and numerical models. The beginning of the collaboration was born through the GEF-FAO project “Interoperable Information System, which systematizes and integrates fisheries, aquaculture and climate change data”, which allowed the signing in 2020 of a framework agreement between DIRECTEMAR and IFOP (https://www.ifop.cl/instituto-de-fomento-pesquero-y-directemar-firman-convenio-de-cooperacion/), later it began to materialize through the “Alert, Prediction and Observation System (S.A.P.O.) for fisheries resilient to climate change in the Large Marine Ecosystem of the Humboldt Current” and was consolidated in recent years with CORFO financing for Sustainable Productive Development (DPS) in a program to Strengthen the Environmental Observation System of the effects of Climate Change on national fishery resources (https://sapo.ifop.cl/). To expand coverage, a station will be installed on Mocha Island in April 2025, a key location for describing the meteorological and oceanographic dynamics of the main spawning area of the common sardine and anchovy in south-central Chile.