A Framework for Ocean Observing.

Abstract

The ocean is critical to the earth’s global systems, regulating weather and climate, the concentration of gases in the atmosphere, the cycling of nutrients, and providing important food resources. As ocean scientists deploy new technologies to observe these dynamic processes, the impacts of human activity are becoming increasingly obvious and of growing concern. Rising sea level, melting ice sheets, ocean acidification, dead zones, harmful algal blooms, coral bleaching, fish population and ecosystem declines are all being experienced at local and global scales. There is also a rising likelihood of major changes in ocean circulation, weather and climate. The well-being of humankind is dependent on the health and function of the world ocean. Ocean scientists are increasingly called upon to provide data and impartial scientific information to support all levels of governance and management, a challenge that requires more and better-coordinated efforts in observing and understanding the ocean and coastal seas around the globe. These will allow us to meet the challenge of delivering ocean information for societal benefit. To date, largely independent observing systems have evolved to meet the needs of particular disciplines and end users – the majority of these measuring ocean physics. It is now critical to extend the scope of observing networks to include ocean geochemistry and biology, and to integrate efforts across these scientific disciplines, because: 1) many of the problems facing the world today are interdisciplinary in nature; and 2) the limited resources available for ocean observing systems requires strong cooperation and leveraging. A key recommendation from the OceanObs’09 (www.oceanobs09.net) Conference held in Venice in September 2009 was for international integration and coordination of interdisciplinary ocean observations. The Conference was sponsored by many international and national ocean agencies, and attended by representatives of ocean observation programs worldwide. Based on impressive agreement among the many groups at the Conference and their strong desire to work collectively, the sponsors commissioned a Task Team to develop an integrated framework for sustained ocean observing. The Task Team’s objective was to use lessons learned from the successes of existing ocean observing efforts and outline a Framework that can guide the ocean observing community as a whole to establish an integrated and sustained global observing system – one that includes ocean physics, biogeochemistry, and ocean biology and ecosystems, and addresses the variables to be measured, the approach to measuring them, and how their data and products will be managed and made widely available to modeling efforts and a wide range of users. Achieving this step-change in ocean observing will require internationally accepted processes and expanded collaboration. The Task Team agreed that the Framework and its coordination processes should be organized around “essential ocean variables (EOVs),” rather than by specific observing system, platform, program, or region. The group also agreed that implementing new EOVs will be carried out according to their readiness levels, allowing timely implementation of components that are already mature, while encouraging innovation and formal efforts to improve readiness and build capacity. Systems engineering approaches provide a common language and consistent handling of requirements, observing technologies, and information flow among different, largely autonomous observing elements linked in a collaborative Framework.