The Southern Ocean is disproportionately important in its effect on the Earth system, impacting climatic, biogeochemical, and ecological systems, which makes recent observed changes to this system cause for global concern. The enhanced understanding and improvements in predictive skill needed for understanding and projecting future states of the Southern Ocean require sustained observations. Over the last decade, the Southern Ocean Observing System (SOOS) has established networks for enhancing regional coordination and research community groups to advance development of observing system capabilities. These networks support delivery of the SOOS 20-year vision, which is to develop a circumpolar system that ensures time series of key variables, and delivers the greatest impact from data to all key end-users. Although the Southern Ocean remains one of the least-observed ocean regions, enhanced international coordination and advances in autonomous platforms have resulted in progress toward sustained observations of this region. Since 2009, the Southern Ocean community has deployed over 5700 observational platforms south of 40 ffi S. Large-scale, multi-year or sustained, multidisciplinary efforts have been supported and are now delivering observations of essential variables at space and time scales that enable assessment of changes being observed in Southern Ocean systems. The improved observational coverage, however, is predominantly for the open ocean, encompasses the summer, consists of primarily physical oceanographic variables, and covers surface to 2000 m. Significant gaps remain in observations of the ice-impacted ocean, the sea ice, depths >2000 m, the air-ocean-ice interface, biogeochemical and biological variables, and for seasons other than summer. Addressing these data gaps in a sustained way requires parallel advances in coordination networks, cyberinfrastructure and data management tools, observational platform and sensor technology, two-way platform interrogation and data-transmission technologies, modeling frameworks, intercalibration experiments, and development of internationally agreed sampling standards and requirements of key variables. This paper presents a community statement on the major scientific and observational progress of the last decade, and importantly, an assessment of key priorities for the coming decade, toward achieving the SOOS vision and delivering essential data to all end-users.
1.Univ Tasmania, Coll Sci & Engn, Inst Marine & Antarctic Studies, Southern Ocean Observing Syst Int Project Off, Hobart, Tas, Australia 2.Australian Antarctic Div, Kingston, Tas, Australia 3.Univ Tasmania, Antarctic Climate & Ecosyst Cooperat Res Ctr, Hobart, Tas, Australia 4.CSIRO, Oceans & Atmosphere, Hobart, ACT, Australia 5.Japan Agcy Marine Earth Sci & Technol, Res & Dev Ctr Global Change, Yokosuka, Kanagawa, Japan 6.Univ Gothenburg, Dept Marine Sci, Gothenburg, Sweden 7.British Oceanog Data Ctr, Liverpool, Merseyside, England 8.Univ Tasmania, Coll Sci & Engn, Inst Marine & Antarctic Studies, Hobart, Tas, Australia 9.Univ Calif Santa Cruz, Dept Ecol & Evolutionary Biol, Santa Cruz, CA 95064 USA 10.Univ Calif San Diego, Scripps Inst Oceanog, La Jolla, CA 92093 USA 11.Abdus Salam Int Ctr Theoret Phys, Earth Syst Phys Sect, Trieste, Italy 12.Univ Cape Town, Fac Sci, Dept Oceanog, Cape Town, South Africa 13.Univ Bristol, Sch Earth Sci, Bristol, Avon, England 14.Univ Edinburgh, Sch Geosci, Edinburgh, Midlothian, Scotland 15.Old Dominion Univ, Ctr Coastal Phys Oceanog, Norfolk, VA USA 16.Woods Hole Oceanog Inst, Woods Hole, MA 02543 USA 17.British Antarctic Survey, Cambridge, England 18.Norwegian Polar Res Inst, Tromso, Norway 19.Istanbul Tech Univ, Polar Res Ctr, Istanbul, Turkey 20.Xiamen Univ Malaysia, China ASEAN Coll Marine Sci CAMS, Sepang, Malaysia 21.Inst Antartico Argentino, Buenos Aires, DF, Argentina 22.Consejo Nacl Invest Cient & Tecn, Ctr Austral Invest Cient CADIC, Ushuaia, Argentina 23.Univ Nacl Tierra del Fuego, Ushuaia, Argentina 24.Rutgers State Univ, Sch Environm & Biol Sci, Dept Marine & Coastal Sci, New Brunswick, NJ USA 25.Ocean Univ China, Key Lab Phys Oceanog, Qingdao, Shandong, Peoples R China 26.Univ Otago, Dept Phys, Dunedin, New Zealand 27.Natl Inst Water & Atmospher Res, Wellington, New Zealand 28.Ctr Southern Hemisphere Oceans Res, Hobart, Tas, Australia 29.Univ Hamburg, Integrated Climate Data, Ctr Earth Syst Res & Sustainabil, Hamburg, Germany 30.Univ Simon Bolivar, Dept Estudios Ambientales, Caracas, Venezuela 31.Univ Bremen, Inst Environm Phys, Bremen, Germany
Recommended Citation:
Newman, Louise,Heil, Petra,Trebilco, Rowan,et al. Delivering Sustained, Coordinated, and Integrated Observations of the Southern Ocean for Global Impact[J]. FRONTIERS IN MARINE SCIENCE,2019-01-01,6