The Full Picture

[

] 76

Why the world needs a Global

Ocean Observing System

Keith Alverson, Chief of Ocean Observations and Services, IOC/UNESCO

cean observations received plenty of media attention

recently when a manned submersible planted a titanium

flag on the sea floor at the North Pole.

Meanwhile,

around the globe powerful monsoon rains and floods killed

hundreds and displaced tens of millions more across Bangladesh

and North India.

The Arctic summer sea ice retreat surpassed

all previous records, even with another month of summer melt

still to come.

Pacific coral reefs were found to have declined 20

per cent in the past two decades, far faster than they were

expected to.

Due to weak La Niña tendencies in the tropical

pacific, US Government forecasters slightly reduced their

Atlantic seasonal hurricane forecast, though they still await an

above average season, with up to nine hurricanes and 16 tropi-

cal storms expected.

A 7.5 magnitude submarine earthquake

struck near the Island of Java but was located too deep in the

earth to generate a destructive tsunami in the Indian Ocean.

The Australian Bureau of Meteorology confirmed that 12-month

rainfall deficiencies had expanded and intensified over large

areas of the country and are likely to remain for some time.

And lastly, the first span was welded into place for a new USD14

million bridge across the Grand Canal in Venice,

a city protected

by the construction of a USD2.6 billion system of floodgates that

may still leave the city vulnerable to future sea level rise.

This list may at first seem like nothing more than an

eclectic smorgasbord of media coverage from early

August 2007, but in fact each one of these stories high-

lights the importance of ocean observations, and together

they clearly demonstrate the need for such observations

to be brought together in a global system. That all these

events occurred so close together is no doubt a coinci-

dence. That they testify to the societal benefits of the

global ocean observing system is not.

Although ocean observations were not mentioned

directly in any of these stories, the societal and economic

impacts that make them of interest to the public, and hence

news agencies, are provided by the Global Ocean Observing

System (GOOS). Exploitation of submarine resources,

prediction of monsoon onset and intensity, monitoring of

arctic ice dynamics, prediction of point of landfall and

degree of intensification of tropical storms, provision of

tsunami warnings, understanding of patterns of protracted

drought, and protection of coastal infrastructure are all

services that can only be maintained due to the ready avail-

ability of sustained and coordinated ocean observations.

One of the reasons ocean observations aren’t mentioned

in the mainstream press is that they are, by design, rela-

Ocean Tracking Network

Installed line

of receivers

}

Acoustic

Receivers

Cable

Range (0.85 km)

Pressure Sensor to measure

temperature,salinity & current

Remote-controlled Sub

Fishing Boat

The Ocean Tracking Network

(www.oceantrackingnetwork.org

) is a global initiative that comprehensively monitors ocean conditions and the

response of marine life to changes in these conditions

Source:

www.oceantracking.net

GEOSS C

OMPONENTS

– O

BSERVING

YSTEMS