The Trump administration’s plan to dismantle an ocean observation system vital to understanding the climate crisis and marine ecosystems would “severely degrade” the accuracy of weather predictions and El Niño forecasts, with economic consequences for the US, European and American scientists have warned.

Decommissioning the US system, which plays a major part in a global ocean observation network, would lead to a massive increase in error in the annual estimates of ocean heating rates, according to research published last month.

As a result, the forecasts and early warning systems for storms, tropical cyclones and El Niño would degrade, “sometimes dangerously so”, according to Sabrina Speich, an expert in global ocean monitoring at the Ecole Normale Supérieure (ENS) in Paris and chair of the ocean expert panel of the Global Climate Observing System.

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[–] Imperious_melange@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Cool, also the Atlantic thermohaline belt has been weakening and is projected to fully collapse in as little as four years in the known worst case. Generally though there's not enough data or funding. Link.

At minimum this would be really bad and worse case this could be the straw that breaks the camel's back and tosses us fully into a biosphere collapse aka the apocalypse.

Good thing we're slowing efforts to deal with climate change, and defending science into how absolutely fucked we are.

[–] AA5B@lemmy.world 1 points 16 hours ago

No big deal, the huge momentum of that massive volume of water means it will take over a century to actually stop moving, after it has collapsed. It will not affect anyone alive today /s