A new perspective on long-term ocean observations

Long-term ocean observations will be a crucial contribution to the Global Earth Observation System of Systems in particular to support impact assessment caused by natural hazards, manmade disasters and by the effect of climate change. A lot of observational infrastructure exists, some for only a limited duration and others for extended periods of time. There is a major issue in collecting and providing all available data and the derived information to potential users and stakeholders. There are also significant concerns that current sources of information cannot be sustained over long time periods because of significant operation and maintenance costs. A way to focus the resources of ocean observations on a global scale is to identify key measurements for an integrated understanding of the ocean environment. An approach, following OceanObs09 discussions, is to define a Framework than can guide the many different global and regional organizations with a stake in an ocean observing system to collaborate. Thus was born the concept of Essential Ocean Variables, following the model established by the well-known essential climate variables. An additional feature of the Framework is the call for assessment and development of “readiness” for sustained observations. Both issues, sustaining observations and making collected information available, are connected. It is anticipated that the Framework can serve as a common base for ensuring long-term ocean observations in the future. This can be an important aspect in the drive for ensuring not only availability, but harmonizing the data quality of ocean observations. Furthermore, the readiness level may reduce the challenges of integrating data and ocean models. Without that, the information stays at some sort of exploratory level that is most useful to carry out ocean process studies but not for routine monitoring tasks. Ultimately, the use of information in societal decisions is necessary to move policy toward- sustained observations. Yet, the route to comprehensive monitoring on a global level needs more than just a framework. There is a strong need to address the availability of low cost, stable sensors for monitoring. This will take concerted efforts of the community, both in developing consensus standards and in uniform implementations. Certainly, the ARGO program is a good example of such implementation although it meant that only one manufacturer was chosen as the main supplier. Advances in electronics and high-density mobile energy sources lead to new opportunities. Complementing these advances with new information systems to improve not only the availability of data, but also the usefulness of the data and models in understanding comprehensive observations is essential. To this point, focusing the community on an initial set of essential ocean variables along with managing expectations by scaling the maturity of the technology may go a long way to a practical implementation of sustained observing systems. In this paper different issues will be sorted out that arise from this new perspective on long-term monitoring and what next steps can be expected. A number of initiatives have been started recently like the GEO Community of Practice on Ocean Observing and a new task as part of the GEO Work Plan for 2012-15. The opportunity that these initiatives offer will be explained in detail with the aim to get the ocean community strongly involved.