Climate change has a major impact on the ecosystems and physics of the seas and oceans. Integrated research on these aspects therefore is very valuable for society.
In 2010, the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and the Israeli Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) decided to focus their marine research on examining the impact of climate change on ocean dynamics and coastal ecosystems.
This includes the following focus areas:
- Rising ocean temperatures,
- Ocean acidification,
- Changing biological and genetic diversity.
Bilateral cooperation in marine research started in 1977 with a project on aquaculture systems. It was the first German-Israeli collaborative project and aimed to develop biological indicators for an early warning system based on overarching statistical evaluation in Israeli seas (Mediterranean, Red Sea) and the German North Sea. 2002 saw the adoption of the action plan on German-Israeli Cooperation in Marine Sciences and Geosciences, which paved the way for refocusing this area of cooperation. From 2011 until 2016, German-Israeli cooperation in marine research focused on research on climate change and human use that makes growing demands on oceans worldwide and on coastal seas in particular. In September 2017, MOST and BMBF published their last funding call and in March 2019, five bilateral projects were launched that went on for 36 months.