The  VAMOS Ocean-Cloud-Atmosphere-Land Study (VOCALS) is an international CLIVAR program the major goal of which is to develop and promote scientific activities leading to improved understanding of the SEP coupled ocean-atmosphere-land system on diurnal to inter-annual timescales. The principal program objectives are:

  1. the improved understanding and regional/global model representation of aerosol indirect effects over the SEP
  2. the elimination of systematic errors in the region of coupled atmospheric-ocean general circulation models, and improved model simulations and predictions of the coupled Earth system in the SEP and global impacts of the system variability