The Ever-Changing and Challenging Role of Ocean Observation: From Local Initiatives to an Oceanwide Collaborative Effort

Abstract

Ocean observation has seen a rapid evolution and has become crucial in providing the much needed data and information toward a well-supported and accurate description of ocean processes which influence the environmental, economic, and societal systems. There has been a significant progress in technologies which have enabled the expansion of the sampling and observing systems both on temporal and spatial scales. Furthermore, online, free access, data portals have grown in number and quality, provided by data aggregators, which have promoted the creation of standardized methods for marine data acquisition and management. Ocean observation is now global, but it depends on the single institutions and laboratories’ capability to guarantee the operation of instruments and longevity in data acquisition. International collaborative initiatives are crucial to support the ever-growing databases and feed the services and products that are fundamental to Blue Growth. Collaboration must be developed at local and regional levels and the monitoring system must ensure data consistency, integrity, and redundancy. The “Atlantic Observatory – Data and Monitoring Infrastructure” project, is an example of a Portuguese effort to bring together on-going initiatives working in the Atlantic area and provide access to high quality marine environmental data covering the Atlantic Ocean basin.

Portuguese European Multidisciplinary Seafloor and Water Column Observatory Initiative

“…The Portuguese Institute for Sea and Atmosphere, I.P. (IPMA), which is both the Portuguese Meteorological, Seismological and Marine service, will disseminate all EMSO-PT data in the relevant national or international databases, through EMSO-ERIC channels and they will also be integrated in a new Ocean Atlantic platform in an effort led by IPMA, funded by the EEA Grants "Blue Growth" Program (Silveira et al, 2022).…”

“…In addition, IPMA will also share the EMSO-PT outputs through IPMA's platform for data sharing being developed in the scope of the "Atlantic Observatory -Data and Monitoring Infrastructure" project (Silveira et al, 2022) that aims to create an infrastructure for the aggregation and dissemination of oceanographic data contributing to the improvement in the research and monitoring of the Atlantic Ocean, whilst supporting the sustainable management of marine resources. All data in the different platforms is open access to all stakeholders.…”

“…1) to revisit the scientific key issues and science services to be addressed related with the seafloor and water column previously identified in the scope of EMSO-ERIC; 2) to clarify the data needed to address scientific issues and foster means to better identify the needs of information and better connect to stakeholders, including societal needs, in the scope of Blue Growth ambition; 3) to establish a sustainable monitoring program of the seafloor and water column, while resorting to satellite and modeling efforts; 4) to identify new platforms and technology for complementing data acquisition and foster higher coverage of ocean observations by means of fixed platforms (e.g., deployment of two EGIM's off the Portuguese coast in 2022) to extend Eulerian observations and also mobile platforms (e.g., autonomous vehicles) to extend regular Lagrangian observations to major water masses that interact with the different Portuguese Atlantic territories; 5) to reinforce the link of EMSO-PT with the goals of other initiatives, such as the GEOSTAR mission (Beranzoli et al, 2002;Miranda et al, 2015), that targeted to deploy in the sea-bed a bottom station designed to support operation of a wide range of sensors able to collect multidisciplinary data on the same location; 6) to strengthen the data acquisition, processing, management, and dissemination infrastructure in order to assure its quality and widespread use; 7) to contribute to the establishment of links with and between other ocean observation initiatives, such as OceanSITES, an integral part of the Global Ocean Observing System, to foster the Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable (FAIR) data principle, and harmonize data quality control, format and metadata procedures; and, 8) to find strategies to deal with marine big data challenges in the phases of data storage, data computing, and analysis in accordance of the guidelines of EMSO-ERIC and other initiatives led by IPMA, as the "Atlantic Observatory -Data and Monitoring Infrastructure" project (Silveira et al, 2022) and the digital platform "we are Atlantic. "…”

Seasonal Water Mass Transformation in the Eastern Indian Ocean from In Situ Observations

“…Due to the lack of in situ observation, recently, many studies have described the water mass variability based on numerical simulation and satellite data [18,19]. Understanding the formation of ocean temperature and salinity are crucial factors that influence various aspects of the ocean and Earth's climate system.…”