Improving Global and Regional Ocean Observing Through Best Practices and Standards.

Abstract

As many of us know, the oceans play a key role in global issues such as climate change, food security, and human health. However, there are challenges to a real understanding of the oceans including their vast dimensions and internal complexity, efficient monitoring and predicting of the planet’s oceans evolutionary dynamics. Thus, the effort of ocean observing and analyses must be a collaborative effort of both regional and global scale. The first and foremost requirement for such collaborative ocean observing is the need to follow well-defined and reproducible methods across activities: from strategies for structuring observing systems, sensor deployment and usage, and the generation of data and information products, to ethical and governance aspects when executing ocean observing. Thus, “ocean observing” are all activities of the value chain from preparing and conducting observations to impacts on society through applications of information. To meet the urgent planet-wide challenges we face, common methods across all aspects of ocean observing should be broadly adopted by the ocean community and, where appropriate, should evolve into. Best Practices and Standards. Thus , these Best Practices and Standards not only make the life of individual scientists easier but also contribute to a better usage of the collected information by other groups and organizations across the value chain.