The Trump administration is taking a U-turn after making a controversial decision.
Late last month, the National Science Foundation — which operates a $368 million deep-ocean monitoring system — posted on its website that it would be removing a number of systems. But now the administration is backtracking after fierce bipartisan backlash.
The system provides critical data on the world’s oceans. Equipment anchored to the sea floor and underwater gliders collect real-time data, allowing scientists to monitor ocean health — including shifts in ocean chemistry and changes to the powerful currents that drive global weather and climate.
The initiative was slated to operate for three decades, but on May 21, the National Science Foundation — which runs the system through federal funding — announced it would be removing equipment from a number of sites, including ones off the coasts of Alaska, North Carolina and Greenland.
The move sparked fierce bipartisan backlash on Capitol Hill. Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley called out the decision, saying “dismantling the Ocean Observatories Initiative is supreme stupidity, costing taxpayers millions of dollars and destroying a vital source of climate data.”
On Wednesday, Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski joined Merkley to pass bipartisan legislation to block the use of federal funds to dismantle the system until the NSF conducts a “thorough review and assessment” of the network with input from scientists and coastal communities.
The foundation responded Thursday, saying it “remains committed to ocean sciences, to responsible stewardship of its research infrastructure and to supporting the stakeholders that depend on it.”
Experts had feared the United States was taking its eyes off the oceans at a time when climate change is fueling devastating storms — and following an alarming study into a so-called “cold blob” or “warming hole” in the North Atlantic Ocean, south of Greenland and Iceland, which has cooled by nearly 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit since 1900.
The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, known as AMOC, works like a conveyor belt — pulling warm water from the tropics to the Northern Hemisphere, where it cools, sinks and flows back south. Research suggests the critical system of ocean currents is weakening as human-driven global warming causes ice to melt and sends a surge of freshwater into the ocean, disrupting the currents’ delicate balance of heat and salinity.
Some scientists are now warning that AMOC is heading toward a breaking point that could occur as early as this century. If it were to collapse, it would be a global catastrophe — causing sea levels to rise on the East Coast of the United States, plunging Europe into a deep freeze and shifting the monsoon in Africa, leading to prolonged droughts.
The Trump administration has not commented on the bipartisan legislation or explained why it decided to cut funding in the first place.
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