Ocean Monitoring Network Faces Funding Challenges

The global network of ocean monitoring instruments faces significant challenges, requiring Europe and Asia to bolster their contributions. A new study in *Nature Climate Change* highlights the fragility of this system. It reveals that the withdrawal of a single major contributor, such as the United States, could drastically impact the accuracy of ocean warming estimates.

This network includes research ships, anchored buoys, autonomous floats, underwater gliders, and sensors carried by marine animals. These instruments gather crucial data on ocean temperature, salinity, and currents. This information is vital for predicting weather patterns, monitoring climate change, and managing marine ecosystems.

Proposed budget cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) in the United States threaten its contributions. Similar pressures exist in other regions, including Europe and China. The study emphasizes that the Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS) is an integrated system where each component plays a unique role.

For example, Argo floats profile the upper two kilometers of the open ocean. Research vessels conduct deeper surveys, providing high-precision reference measurements. Moored buoys offer continuous time series data for phenomena like El Niño and the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). Underwater gliders focus on coastal areas, and sensors on elephant seals monitor polar regions.

The data collected by GOOS supports daily weather forecasts and subseasonal to seasonal predictions. It is also critical for tracking tropical cyclones and issuing marine heatwave warnings. Accurate sea-level projections, essential for coastal infrastructure planning, depend on decades of consistent measurements.

Advanced models and artificial intelligence (AI) cannot replace direct observations. Forecast models, whether traditional or AI-based, rely on continuous data assimilation to adjust simulations with real-world measurements. Without ongoing observations, especially subsurface data, the ability to predict future ocean states and their impacts diminishes.