The shutdown of the ocean observatory due to Trump administration funding cuts has resulted in the loss of critical climate data that is essential for long-term climate research.

Scientists lose critical climate record as ocean observatory will go dark under Trump funding cuts. #ClimateChange #GlobalWarming https://apnews.com/article/climate-oceans-data-trump-science-a9539443dfaa32b3a67468a25f8b2674

Scientists lose critical climate record as ocean observatory will go dark under Trump funding cuts "It's a crippling loss of information," Ed Dever, a professor at Oregon State University who helped lead the initiative's Pacific Northwest operations, told The Associated Press Tuesday. Scientists can get some data from the surface, such as temperature and the distribution of chlorophyll, which drives photosynthesis in plants, but information below cannot be gathered from satellites alone, including low oxygen zones. The initiative launched in 2015 after more than a decade of community planning and construction. It was designed as a 25 to 30-year project, built in part around the oceanographic consensus that detecting meaningful #climate signals requires at least three decades of continuous data. "We've just got to the 10 year record," Dever said, "which will give you some hints, but it won't continue on." https://phys.org/news/2026-06-scientists-critical-climate-ocean-observatory.html #ClimateChange #ClimateScience #Oceanography #Trump