Climate change, ocean monitoring system to be abruptly dismantled

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Feds will abruptly dismantle system monitoring climate change, oceans<br>Critics say the move to retire the $360 million system doesn't make sense. The National Science Foundation cites new scientific priorities.<br>Dinah Voyles PulverUSA TODAY

Updated June 11, 2026, 6:48 a.m. ET<br>Hear this story

The National Science Foundation has begun dismantling a major ocean monitoring network more than a decade earlier than planned.<br>Some scientists say it will be a “tragic” loss of crucial information about the world’s warming oceans.<br>The dismantling will end most of the monitoring in one of the nation's most advanced, continuous observing systems less than halfway through its intended 25-year lifespan. Researchers warn that the loss of measurements will limit efforts to better understand ocean phenomena, including marine heat waves, hurricanes, fisheries and long-term shifts in climate, even as the oceans reach record-warm temperatures.<br>The Science Foundation-funded Ocean Observatories Initiative oversees web-like arrays of instruments and sensors from the surface to the sea floor in remote ocean regions. The foundation will remove four of its last five arrays by the end of summer 2027, according to a statement by Jim Edson, a principal investigator for the initiative and senior scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

The reason for the removals remains unclear. In a media statement, the foundation indicates it's shifting to a more nimble approach and new scientific priorities. But part of its justification has been questioned and challenged by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and authors of a key Academies report. The announcement comes after dramatic budget cuts were proposed in 2025.<br>Like other federal agencies and programs, the foundation has been under pressure to slash budgets and staff, and to deemphasize work on what has been called "climate alarmism" by members of the Trump administration and its supporters.

Scientists say deep ocean network filled gaps in monitoring<br>The ocean initiative, which came online in 2016 at a cost of more than $360 million, originally included seven arrays.<br>“It’s a marvelous scientific experimentation, from the surface to the deepest part of where they are moored,” said Craig McLean, a former acting chief scientist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The hundreds of instruments are separate from the network NOAA uses to monitor global ocean conditions for climate outlooks and weather forecasting, McLean said. "The global ocean observing system that we base our climate and weather prediction forecasts on is safe."<br>The ocean initiative is not, to the frustration of McLean and many other ocean and climate scientists. Removal of the array off the Pacific Northwest coast is underway and expected to be complete later in June, according to Edson's statement. Three others will follow: In the Gulf of Alaska, on the continental shelf off New England and in the Irminger Sea southeast of Greenland.<br>After the dismantling, only a cabled array that monitors seismic and volcanic activity along the Juan de Fuca tectonic plate off the Pacific Northwest will remain. Two arrays in the southern oceans off South America were discontinued in 2018 and 2020.

Though the foundation said the decade of data produced by the initiative will remain online and accessible, "real-time data streams and observing capabilities at those locations will come to an end."<br>What the instruments measure<br>The arrays track marine heatwaves, collect data on how the ocean influences hurricanes and other events and improve the understanding of fisheries and other marine ecosystems. The instruments measure temperature, salinity, oxygen levels, currents and more, said Suzanne Pelisson, director of public relations for Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, a science foundation partner on the initiative. Annual maintenance costs were estimated at roughly $40 million a year.

"The program has generated billions of megabytes" of data – physical, chemical, biological and geological – and supported researchers in science, government and industry, Pelisson said. Fisheries researchers, for example, used the data to monitor water currents and fish movement.<br>NOAA did not respond to questions about the role of the monitoring arrays.

Researchers warn of risks for climate, fisheries and national security<br>The removal will increase the risks to coastal communities, local economies and national security, Mark Spalding, president of the nonprofit Ocean Foundation, told USA TODAY. It means less focus on flood risk, less data for commercial fisheries and fewer data points on the Atlantic Overturning Meridional Circulation, a key weather driver, Spalding said.<br>In a series of LinkedIn posts about the monitoring network, Spalding noted that even though the nation has sophisticated satellites that...