Scientists Warn Trump Administration's Ocean Monitoring Cuts Could Severely Degrade Weather and El Niño Forecasts

The National Science Foundation, acting under the Trump administration, announced on May 21 that it will remove all in-water arrays and infrastructure from four of the five currently operating Ocean Observatories Initiative sites over the next 15 months, with dismantling of the Coastal Endurance Array already underway. The OOI, a $368 million network of seafloor systems, underwater gliders, moored surface platforms, and hundreds of deep-sea instruments, has provided continuous oceanographic data since 2016 on ocean temperature, chemistry, currents, biological conditions, and phenomena including marine heatwaves, harmful algal blooms, and Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation activity. Research published last month in Nature Climate Change found that losing US observations would be worse than randomly losing 80 percent of all global ocean data, and would produce a 163 percent increase in error in annual ocean heating rate estimates that underpin weather prediction and El Niño forecasting. Scientists note the timing is particularly concerning as an intense El Niño event is predicted for summer 2025, with experts warning that degraded forecasts could cost farmers, insurers, and disaster responders across the US and South America who rely on El Niño outlooks for planning. NSF described the action as a 'descope' aligned with 'evolving scientific priorities,' and stated that all previously collected data will remain accessible, though it was unclear what monitoring capacity would remain. Researchers also raised concerns about the irreversible loss of institutional expertise needed to deploy complex deep-sea infrastructure, warning that rebuilding such capability would require significant reinvention. The European Union separately announced a $107 million ocean monitoring initiative called OceanEye, though officials noted it was long-planned and not a direct response to the US cuts.