"Ocean observations" refers to the act of gathering information and studying the various aspects of the ocean, such as its temperature, currents, salinity, and marine life. This can be done through the use of instruments, sensors, and scientific studies to better understand and monitor the health and behavior of the ocean.
Full definition
A better understanding of ocean climate and ecosystems, as well as human impacts and vulnerabilities, requires the coordination of a continuous and long - term system
of ocean observations.
In addition, a disconnect still exists between what is needed scientifically and what is available for
comprehensive ocean observations, especially in terms of biological variables.
The pace of technology development for enhancing
making ocean observations poses a challenge for the global ocean observing systems to properly integrate these new capabilities into sustained observing networks.
As Stephen C. Riser and M. Susan Lozier note in their February 2013 Scientific American article, «Rethinking the Gulf Stream,» «A comparison of the Argo data with
ocean observations from the 1980s, carried out by Dean Roemmich and John Gilson of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, shows that the upper few hundred meters of the oceans have warmed by about 0.2 degree C in the past 20 years.
They represent an estimate of the spatially and temporally complete state of the global ocean given the sparse network of
historical ocean observations.
Durack and Lawrence Livermore colleagues worked with a Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientist to
compare ocean observations with ocean models.
The Japan Coast Guard (JCG) announced the expansion of their
unmanned ocean observation fleet of Wave Gliders to the 9th Regional District, headquartered in Niigata, Japan.
To move one step closer to understanding Earth's perturbed energy budget, we need a full depth, global
ocean observation system — a deep Argo.
Gridding
sparse ocean observations onto a very high (in this case, 1 - by - 1 degree latitude x longitude) resolution is prone to producing some apparent structures that are simply artifacts of mathematical interpolation, even when isopycnal methods are utilised (this is common for gridding of data).
It's signature product is the Submaran ™, the first hybrid wind and solar - powered surface and subsurface vessel designed for
extended ocean observation and data collection.
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US ocean observation critical to understanding climate change, but lacks long - term national planning: The ocean plays a critical role in climate and weather, serving as a massive reservoir of heat and water that influences tropical storms, El Nin?o, and climate change.»
According to the researchers, to better understand if Matthew's intensification was aided by the warm - water eddies and the residing barrier layer in the Caribbean Sea's upper ocean, more ambient and in - storm
upper ocean observations in this basin are needed to improve forecast models for the region.
To sustain provisional and regulating services from ocean, communication between oceanographers and multiple stakeholders are indispensable in planning and
implementing ocean observation and monitoring.
The OceanObs»09 conference (Venice, Italy) involved more than 600 participants from 36 countries who defined a vision for societally
beneficial ocean observations to be sustained over the next decade.
Finally, the results by Curry & Mauritzen focused on longer time scales for which they had
collected ocean observations, while only model results were provided for long - term evolution by Hatun et al..
Find out more on how the
GOOS ocean observations links to the mandates and related themes in the GOOS strategic mapping tool.
However, in August 2015, the US Coast Guard with additional support from agencies such as the Office of Naval Research and NOAA carried out a ground breaking atmosphere - ice -
ocean observation flight to the North Pole.
In the meantime, Keenlyside and colleagues plan to incorporate the
increased ocean observations from the last 10 years into their forecast system.
Reichler and colleagues used published
worldwide ocean observations from a dozen research groups to reconstruct behavior of the conveyor belt ocean circulation during the same 30 - year period.
Durack and Lawrence Livermore colleagues worked with a Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientist to
compare ocean observations with ocean models.
OceanObs ’09 expanded the range of communities working together to undertake more
comprehensive ocean observations, and led to the Framework for Ocean Observing.
Still a lot of work to be done, and a deep -
ocean observation system would be desirable but, as Balmaseda (2013) has demonstrated, the observations show that global warming has actually accelerated over the last 16 years.
Based on model experiments, it has been suggested that errors resulting from the highly inhomogeneous distribution of
ocean observations in space and time (see Appendix 5.
A new report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine finds that continuity of
ocean observations is vital to gain an accurate understanding of the climate, and calls for a decadal, national plan that is adequately resourced and implemented to ensure critical ocean information is available to understand and predict future changes.
Given that
ocean observations for climate provide a wide range of benefits to the agricultural, shipping, fishing, insurance, and energy - supply industries, the committee that wrote the report suggested that efforts could be made to draw support for ocean observing from the commercial sector.
«We looked at four GFDL models and compared their output to
ocean observations in the region.