Buoyed

I had wanted to write about it for several weeks. The Trump administration, through the National Science Foundation, had proposed deepsixing the Ocean Observatories Initiative, which monitors critical weather data. After a bipartisan outcry, they have now reversed their decision.

The National Science Foundation is reversing a decision to shut down buoys and other maritime science equipment used to monitor weather and climate conditions along the Pacific Northwest coast and elsewhere.

Established in 2016, the Ocean Observatories Initiative maintains ocean monitoring instruments on the Pacific and Atlantic coasts to collect open-access data used for weather forecasts, and wave tracking and other research. The program’s 900 ocean sensors, built for $386 million, also detect marine heatwaves and El Niño-related anomalies.

Last month, the Ocean Observatories Initiative announced it was “descoping,” a plan that involves removing in-water infrastructure by 2027. The National Science Foundation said the Coastal Endurance Array, previously deployed in the Northeast Pacific Ocean off the Oregon and Washington coasts, has already been removed from the water, but the agency is developing plans to redeploy it.

I am glad that somebody finally came to their senses on this. It is imperative that we have this sort of raw data in a time of significant global warming, turbulent weather and climate change.