Oceanographer Gary Meyers, an Australian researcher from Tasmania who conducted part of the workshop, said climate scientists have recognized in recent years that data from the Pacific alone isn't enough to predict large-scale climate patterns. El Niño events, for example, also can be affected by areas outside the Pacific, he said.

"We've realized that you have to look at the whole Pacific-Indian Ocean system together," he said. "They are linked together in a complex way that we don't fully understand."

As an example, rainfall in the Indonesian region can be depressed during Pacific El Niño events. But if there is also cool water on the Indian Ocean side of Indonesia, rainfall can be depressed further. That can create a high-pressure area above the region, which in turn affects jet streams and other weather patterns far away, Meyers said.

In Hawai'i, a powerful El Niño event can cause winter drought and more frequent and stronger tropical cyclone activity during the hurricane season. A weak El Niño event in the Pacific is expected to continue this winter.

Unlike the Atlantic and Pacific, the Indian Ocean lacks access to the cool areas of the northern hemisphere. As a result, it has among the warmest of ocean areas in tropical latitudes. Furthermore, with the impacts of global climate change, it has warmed up more during the past 30 years than most other tropical areas.

"It's not only the warmest ocean in the world, but it's gotten hotter," Meyers said.

Meyers said 70 researchers from seven countries met to work out ways to better track what's going on there. Hawai'i is involved in part because researchers in the International Pacific Research Center, including its director, oceanographer Jay McCreary, are among those working on the issue.

A complete ocean tracking program will require satellite monitoring, drifting ocean-sensing buoys and permanent, moored monitoring stations, Meyers said.

"Satellites are the backbone of the system," he said. Most of the satellite technology is already in place, as are drifting buoys, but "the essential extra thing we need is an array of fixed mooring sites."

The scientists will seek help with the program from nations that rim the Indian Ocean. But because the ocean affects areas well beyond its shores, they'll also be looking to the major world powers for help, Meyers said.