Palma, location of the 16th edition of the International Workshop on Modeling the Ocean

IWMO is being held in Spain for the first time with the support of IMEDEA and brings together 61 participants from 14 countries.

The city of Palma is hosting, for the first time in Spain, the most important international meeting for the scientific community dedicated to ocean modelling: the 16th edition of the International Workshop on Modeling the Ocean (IWMO 2026). The symposium, organised with the support of the Mediterranean Institute for Advanced Studies (IMEDEA, CSIC-UIB), is being held from 2 to 5 June at the Port Center of the Port Authority of the Balearic Islands and brings together 61 researchers and observational scientists from 14 countries. The previous edition was held in Stanford, California.

The meeting also hosts the Outstanding Young Scientist Awards (OYSA) competition, and selected contributions will be considered for publication in a special issue of the journal Ocean Dynamics.

The opening ceremony, held on Tuesday, 2 June, was attended by IMEDEA Director Alejandro Orfila; the President of the Port Authority of the Balearic Islands, Javier Sanz; and the Vice-Rector for Scientific Policy and Research at the University of the Balearic Islands (UIB), Víctor Homar.

IWMO provides a forum for sharing recent advances and exchanging knowledge on the many aspects of ocean modelling and the interactions between the atmosphere, waves, ocean, sea ice, currents and sediments, including processes, analysis and prediction. The workshop features coastal, regional and basin-scale studies, as well as interdisciplinary contributions.

The programme is structured around four thematic blocks:

• Tuesday, 2 June: From Eddies to Ocean Fronts: Mesoscale and Submesoscale Dynamics and Ocean Mixing.
• Wednesday, 3 June: Earth System Modelling: Ocean–Atmosphere–Waves–Sea Ice Interactions and Extreme Events.
• Thursday, 4 June: Nonlinear Oceans: Instabilities, Coherent Structures and Applications.
• Friday, 5 June: High-Resolution Modelling for Coastal and Operational Oceanography: Hazards, Transport and Management.

The symposium features three distinguished keynote speakers leading the programme’s thematic sessions.

Baylor Fox-Kemper is a physical oceanographer at Brown University. His research focuses on ocean physics and its role within the Earth's climate system. He has worked at the University of Colorado, Princeton University, NOAA, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and MIT. Since 2013, he has been a faculty member in the Department of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences at Brown University. He co-chaired the chapter on Oceans, Cryosphere and Sea Level Change in the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (Working Group I) and currently co-chairs a core project of the World Climate Research Programme on Earth System Modelling and Observations. He is also an associate editor of Science Advances and a member of JASON.

Emilio Hernández-García is a physicist and research professor at the Institute for Cross-Disciplinary Physics and Complex Systems (IFISC). He leads and collaborates on projects related to ocean transport, ecological modelling and climate variability. His publications span theoretical advances, methodological innovations and interdisciplinary applications, building bridges between physics and marine sciences to address complex oceanographic challenges.

Joanna Staneva is a senior scientist and Head of the Hydrodynamics and Data Assimilation Department at the Institute of Coastal Systems of the Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon in Geesthacht, Germany. She leads research on multiscale ocean modelling, coastal hazards and the development of Digital Twins of the Ocean (DTOs). She is co-chair of the international DITTO programme and contributes to the coordination of the Horizon Europe FOCCUS project. Her work has significantly advanced operational forecasting systems in the North Sea, Baltic Sea and Black Sea. She is also a regular contributor to the Copernicus Marine Service Ocean State Reports, among other initiatives.