The Trump administration's plan to dismantle a crucial ocean observation system would severely degrade the accuracy of weather predictions and El Niño forecasts, with significant economic consequences for the United States, according to European and American scientists.
Research published last month indicates that decommissioning the US system, a key part of the global ocean observation network, would lead to a massive increase in error in annual estimates of ocean heating rates. This would degrade forecasts and early warning systems for storms, tropical cyclones, and El Niño, sometimes dangerously so, warned Sabrina Speich, an expert in global ocean monitoring at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris and chair of the ocean expert panel of the Global Climate Observing System.
The Ocean Observatories Initiative
The Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI), operated by the US National Science Foundation, is a vast network of seafloor systems, underwater gliders, and moored surface platforms that provides data to researchers, policymakers, educators, and mariners worldwide. Covering both US coastlines and extending into the North Atlantic and Southern Ocean, the OOI has been used to study marine heatwaves, harmful algal blooms, subduction zone earthquakes, ocean acidification, and fisheries variability.
Dismantling it would remove a major component of the Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS), a network of robotic floats, moored buoys, and research vessels described as the eyes and ears of the ocean. The warning systems based on this data save lives, experts say.
Impact on Climate Tracking
Prescient research published in Nature Climate Change last month showed that data losses in GOOS could degrade ocean heat estimates that underpin weather prediction, El Niño forecasting, and fisheries management. Losing US observations would be worse than randomly losing 80 percent of all ocean data worldwide, the study found. US-funded platforms span every ocean basin, filling critical gaps that no other nation currently covers.
Ocean heat content is the most robust indicator of climate change, not just for the ocean but for the entire climate system, Speich explained. Vertical temperature profiles that provide ocean heat content are among the simplest measurements, and losing them would remove the ability to track ocean warming and the climate system as a whole. Forecasts would continue but degrade, sometimes dangerously, as atmospheric observations alone are insufficient. Ocean data is fundamental to early warning systems for tropical storms, cyclones, and El Niño.
The economic costs would be felt within the United States, affecting agriculture, insurance, and disaster response. In a year predicted to be an El Niño year with supercharged weather extremes, losing US observations could mean losing the ability to see it coming clearly and act in time. Farmers in the US and South America rely on El Niño forecasts to decide what to plant and when, making every agricultural decision months in advance.
Research Findings
The most recent El Niño in 2023–2024 was one of the five strongest on record and contributed to 2024's record-breaking global temperature increase. Removing US observations alone would produce a 163 percent increase in error for annual ocean heating rates, according to Speich and her co-authors.
On Thursday, the European Union announced it would boost its own ocean monitoring by investing $107 million in an initiative called OceanEye, more than half of which will go to GOOS. The European Commission stated the announcement was long-planned and not a direct response to the US move.
Expert Reactions
John P. Abraham, professor of engineering at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota and co-author of the research, described the US administration's move to dismantle the $368 million OOI system as penny-wise, pound foolish. He noted that the US government wants to save less than a billion in sensors, which are the eyes and ears of the ocean, while the country faces hundreds of billions in climate costs per year. The cost of the observation system is a fraction of the climate costs from hurricanes and storms that hit the US.
Between 1980 and 2024, the US suffered more than 400 climate and weather disasters with damages exceeding or reaching $1 billion. In 2024 alone, the costs of such disasters amounted to $177 billion. The billion-dollar climate and weather product managed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will no longer be updated due to evolving priorities, according to a note on its website. Abraham emphasized that this is not about saving money but about killing climate science research.
Samantha Burgess, strategic climate lead at the Copernicus Climate Change Service, the European Union's Earth observation system, said ocean observations are irreplaceable because the deep ocean cannot be seen from space. They save lives by warning of severe storms. International cooperation is needed to get the best available observations to mitigate risks in a changing world. Without ocean observations, we are flying blind, she said.
A statement earlier this week by the National Science Foundation, which funds and oversees the OOI, said the program was not being canceled entirely and described the plans as a descope, or reduction of elements, though it was not clear what data collection capacity would remain.
