<
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jun/05/trump-plan-ocean-monitoring-system-concern-scientists>
"The Trump administration’s plan to dismantle an ocean observation system vital
to understanding the climate crisis and marine ecosystems would “severely
degrade” the accuracy of weather predictions and El Niño forecasts, with
economic consequences for the US, European and American scientists have warned.
Decommissioning the US system, which plays a major part in a global ocean
observation network, would lead to a massive increase in error in the annual
estimates of ocean heating rates, according to research published last month.
As a result, the forecasts and early warning systems for storms, tropical
cyclones and El Niño would degrade, “sometimes dangerously so”, according to
Sabrina Speich, an expert in global ocean monitoring at the Ecole Normale
Supérieure (ENS) in Paris and chair of the ocean expert panel of the Global
Climate Observing System.
The Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI), run by the US National Science
Foundation, is a vast network of seafloor systems, underwater gliders and
moored surface platforms that feeds data to researchers, policymakers,
educators and mariners worldwide. The initiative, which covers both US
coastlines and extends into the North Atlantic and Southern Ocean, has been
used to study marine heatwaves, harmful algal blooms, subduction zone
earthquakes, ocean acidification and fisheries variability.
Dismantling it would remove a major component of the Global Ocean Observing
System (GOOS), a network of robotic floats, moored buoys and research vessels
experts describe as the “eyes and ears” of the ocean. The warning systems based
on the data, “save lives”, experts say.
Prescient research published in
Nature Climate Change last month showed how
data losses in GOOS, a UN-coordinated framework for ocean data for weather and
climate collected by several countries, could degrade the ocean heat estimates
that underpin weather prediction, El Niño forecasting and fisheries management.
Losing US observations would be worse than randomly losing 80% of all ocean
data worldwide, it found. US-funded platforms span every ocean basin, plugging
critical gaps that no other nation currently fills."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
