Ian Macadam , Mandy Freund , Rachel Law , Elisabeth Vogel

This year ’ s AMOS National Conference was something of an experiment as , for the first time , the conference was held virtually .

The theme for the conference was ‘ Science for Impact ’, highlighting the real-world benefits the AMOS sciences have , and the collaboration and partnerships required to reap them . The main week was packed full of plenaries , parallel sessions , panel discussions and incorporated around 400 presentations . There was a total of 500 registrations throughout the week — attendance at the plenaries was typically more than 150 .

This year the AMOS community really did the conference proud , especially in stepping up to run a good swag of particularly relevant and stimulating workshops . A total of nine half- and full-day workshops ran over three days in the weeks immediately before and after the main conference week . It was particularly pleasing to see that actual work was done during these workshops ! For example , the participants in ‘ Python for atmosphere and ocean science ’ were required to write python code during the workshop . Teachers and climate scientists put pen to paper ( or fingers to keyboard ) to draft educational resources on climate science at ‘ Climate Classrooms : Educational resources for teachers ’.

Despite the fantastic online portal on which the conference was run , it has to be said that this year ’ s conference wasn ’ t the same in terms of face-to-face chats and networking . There ’ s nothing quite like a shared bottle of outrageously unsubtle Coonawarra Shiraz or a bowl of particularly flavoursome hummus to really oil a debate on whether the CMIP6 models can deliver more useful climate projections for Australia than the CMIP5 models . It was also tough for a speaker to know whether their talk is being received well when they can ’ t see the audience ( e . g . Are they laughing at the jokes ? Have they all fallen asleep ? Is anyone even out there ?). But social media posts related to the conference were numerous and often highly entertaining . Outside conference content there were tales of participants attempting to wrest control of IT infrastructure from other family members and , occasionally , pets abound .

But far from being a negative experience , there were very real benefits of a virtual conference . Participants could enjoy the latest AMOS science live from anywhere in the world . This year , there was no need to spend time ( or carbon !) travelling or dealing with the bureaucracy associated with travel . The dollar and environmental cost of attending this year ’ s conference was undoubtedly a fraction of what it would have been had the conference been held in-person .

Being online also enabled many to participate who wouldn ’ t otherwise have been able to — and the conference was the richer for this . For example , would an in-person workshop on educational resources on climate science for teachers have been attended by teachers from five Australian States , as the Climate Classrooms workshop was ? At an in-person conference , would we have got to hear in a plenary that prominent New York-based NASA scientist Kate Marvel ’ s dad was convinced of the reality of climate change by the insurance industry ? How many of AMOS ’ s overseas members would have been able to participate ?

Everyone will have their own highlights from the conference but following are a few reminders of some of the experiences we shared .

The invited plenary speakers and AMOS award winners gave us informative and thought-provoking talks . Uwe Radok Award winner Alessandro Silvano reminded us of how much we have yet to observe in the Earth system when he noted that the Antarctic Totten Glacier , which could contribute significantly to global sea level rise , was reached by ship for the first time as recently as 2015 . Leading Australian social researcher Rebecca Huntley helped us understand the range of public perspectives on climate change . CSIRO ’ s Jaci Brown