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| Preparation for a deep water measurement programme in the Arabian Sea. © GEOS |
As is the case in practically all areas of science and technologies, the study of the sea for its own sake, and as the basis for understanding the processes that make the oceans work, arrived rather late in human time. Ocean knowledge was first collected for practical ends, by fishermen and whalers planning to exploit living resources, by mariners planning to take advantage of ocean winds and currents, by harbour masters needing to manage imports and exports, and by navies to utilize battle space. These practical uses of ocean knowledge are still extremely important and involve the expenditure of billions of dollars and the time of hundreds of thousands of people.
In contrast with its study for practical reasons, the study of the oceans for purely scientific reasons is a relatively new phenomenon. The first global oceanographic expedition did not take place until 1872-5 aboard H.M.S.Challenger. Even then, much of the rationale for the expedition was commercial, involving an improved understanding of the ridges on the seabed that could interfere with the new technology of seabed telegraph cables. Nevertheless, the contribution of science to the meeting of practical ends has been enormous through providing the understanding that, combined with knowledge, leads to accurate prediction, though not in all cases ; for example, tidal prediction still tends to be based more on observation than on theory. With this rise in understanding has come the realization that the ocean plays a vital role in the world's climate system. Forecasting weather and climate - with the aid of enormously powerful supercomputers - is a real science in its own right. By coupling numerical models of the ocean and atmosphere it is now possible to predict climate with a fair degree of confidence.
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| Sea-surface temperature map of the Indian Ocean during the passage of cyclone Marlene (6 April 1995) |
Today the practical study of the oceans, especially for their physical properties and in the cause of forecasting or predicting wind, waves, tides and currents, goes by the name of 'operational oceanography' - a new name for an old game. As the Information Society has grown as a by-product of the increasing power of the computer, so the demand of the public, of government and of industry has grown for ocean information, spurring a rapid growth in operational oceanography. The ability to meet this demand was fueled by the success of major oceanographic research programmes, like WOCE (World Ocean Circulation Experiment) and the TOGA (Tropical Oceans and Global Atmosphere) Programme, in the 1980s and 1990s. Those in their turn were developed in response to the demand for more and more information. It is impossible any longer to see which is the chicken and which the egg - the science or the technology.
Over the next couple of decades or more, the need to understand and forecast the oceans and their resources is expected to increase significantly, and on the progressively shorter time-scales that will permit relevant and significant decision making, for instance to mitigate the effects of predicted hurricanes or El Niņo events. The burgeoning world population, advances in technology which permit more rapid or extensive development of industry and commerce, and the counterbalancing heightened environmental awareness of the public at large, are all changing the nature and requirements of the world in which we live. More and more attention is being focused on the ocean, which we now realise is an important and integral part of the Earth's natural environmental system.
Safe and sustainable maritime navigation, the exploitation of marine resources and the safeguarding of both local and global marine environments will all depend on this enhanced capacity to provide information and forecasts. Growth in 'operational oceanography', fueled in turn by advanced understanding through research, will enable us to meet this need. It will provide operationally useful information for a wide range of consumers about the present state of the sea, and about its future states for as far ahead as possible.
This rising demand has created a challenge that over the years has engendered or sparked the founding of several international monitoring or observing systems related to the oceans and coastal marine areas. These are now being linked together by the IOC and its partners, who have been making considerable strides in the establishment of an ambitious Global Ocean Observing System. GOOS is built on or linked to the subsystems that preceded it, and that addressed particular ocean phenomena rather than taking an integrated and holistic view of ocean processes. For example, a Global Sea-level Observing System (GLOSS), has been functioning since 1985 and is now part of GOOS.
Another programme which provides obviously essential input into GOOS and other ocean science programmes is the IOC-sponsored International Oceanographic Data and Information Exchange (IODE). Other substantial IOC monitoring involvements, in the realm of living marine resources, are the Harmful Algal Bloom (HAB) programme and the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network (GCRMN).
A very tangible and timely service is provided by the IOC co-sponsored Tsunami Warning System in the Pacific, where immediate, sophisticated monitoring capability is crucial to saving lives and mitigating damage to property.
Further development of operational oceanography and its global manifestation, GOOS, will come about through the implementation of designs for ocean monitoring that are being developed by the GOOS scientific community, through the development of pilot projects to test GOOS concepts, and through the filling of gaps in the ocean that are data-sparse at present. Such activities are being called for, for instance, by the Conference of the Parties to the Framework Convention on Climate Change, recognising that ocean observations are key to the accurate forecasting of climatic variability. Yet more research is needed as the basis for developing forecasting methods for chemical and biological variables within the ocean. Here a challenge is to develop the basis for an ecosystem approach to fisheries management, in which forecasts of the oceans' physical behaviour lead to forecasts of the distribution of productivity, and, eventually to forecasts of ecosystem and associated fish development.