Alaskans will be flying blind after NSF decommissions ocean monitoring network

The government is also preparing El Niño conditions later this summer.

Ocean Station Papa’s sensors and other equipment help weather forecasters and emergency managers know in advance when a typhoon like Halong is about to hit.

An Ocean Station Papa buoy floats in the waters of the Gulf of Alaska.

Credit: NOAA

“We’re looking at ocean temperature, salinity, currents, wave height and direction, wind stress,” Stratton said. “All of this feeds into the models that NOAA and universities use to tell us how strong hurricanes are, how coastal waters are rising or falling, when we should expect flooding.”

The loss of Ocean Station Papa could put remote Alaskan communities, especially coastal Indians, at risk.

“We are seeing diseases directly related to food security, money, knowledge of many generations, human stability. So we are not looking at biological problems, it’s economic. It’s cultural. It’s a way of life,” added Stratton.

For long-time fisheries advocate Tim Bristol, director of the nonprofit SalmonState, hauling surveillance equipment offshore seems counterintuitive.

“No matter where you are on a particular issue, you hear a desire, a call for more information, better data, deeper analysis, and this seems like, you know, a sprint in the wrong direction,” Bristol said.

Thoman, a meteorologist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, said this could be true. But even if the United States, which has been a leader in science for a long time, wants to bury its head in the sand about sea change and global warming, it does not mean that the information will go away.

Other countries will take steps to fill the gaps caused by the loss of the Ocean Observatories Initiative, it is believed that, since their location in international waters provides important information to many countries.

“You know the Chinese can come and knock down the buoy tomorrow if they want to,” Thoman said. “If someone thinks that the US, by ceasing to do this, will stop monitoring or restricting our understanding of this, they are very wrong. All these things are international efforts.”

This article appeared first Inside Weather News.