Equitable Ocean Prediction Systems: Bridging the North-South Divide

Credit Sebastian Voortman

By Mathieu Belbéoch and Emma Heslop
GENEVA / PARIS, Nov 28 2024 (IPS)

At their recent Leaders’ Summit in Rio de Janeiro, the G20 committed to support developing countries in responding to global crises and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). To meet that pledge, the world’s leading economies need to enhance global collaboration and investment in ocean prediction systems and technology.

As we highlight in the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO (UNESCO-IOC) 2024 State of the Ocean Report, this is key to both addressing climate change and closing the gaps currently hindering progress towards multiple SDGs.

Strengthening the capacity of under-resourced countries to improve ocean observing and forecasting is imperative to protect people from the impacts of a changing ocean.

Sea level is rising and will accelerate in the future, driven by unprecedented ocean warming and melting glaciers, including the Greenland and West Antarctica ice sheets. Not only do we need climate action, but—with the ocean containing 40 times as much carbon as the atmosphere—we need to increase our understanding of how proposed climate solutions will interact with the ocean’s carbon cycle and ecosystems, and the resulting risks and benefits.

In fact, observations and forecasts of the ocean’s physical, chemical and biological changes should be at the root of all sustainable development decision-making. Fortunately, new technologies and networks mean our capacity for monitoring and prediction is growing, but not fast enough and not in all parts of the ocean.

After four decades of investment, ocean prediction systems have matured and can now provide accurate forecasts. However, persistent gaps remain, both spatially—particularly in the Southern Hemisphere, polar regions, and island nations—and thematically in critical application areas where more ocean data is needed to advance our prediction of extreme weather, coastal hazards, marine biodiversity, and ocean health.

There is an increasingly urgent need to fill in these missing links to allow us to adapt to changes, predict and manage risk, develop accurate future climate scenarios, and accelerate sustainable blue economic growth—including clean ocean energy technologies.

To date, the Global Ocean Observing System comprises more than 8,000 observing platforms, operated by 84 countries through16 global networks and many biological and ecological observing programmes, and delivering more than 120,000 observations into operational systems daily.

However, to address global challenges and inequalities, spatial and temporal ocean observation gaps must be addressed, particularly those related to the inter-connected triple planetary crises of climate, biodiversity and pollution. That will require recognition of the Global Ocean Observing System as a critical infrastructure and greater cooperation to align data reporting and access.

Free and open data access must be assured as a prerequisite for equitable global sharing of data and information. Supporting this will help G20 States to reduce asymmetries in science, technology, and innovation; one of the inequalities the Leaders’ Summit declared to be at the root of all global challenges.

To improve data access and interoperability, worldwide efforts coordinated by the International Oceanographic Data and Information Exchange (IODE) have established a network of 101 data centres in 68 countries. Further expansion of this integrated IOC Data Architecture, including the development of UNESCO-IOC’s Ocean InfoHub Project and new Ocean Data and Information System (ODIS), will create a more unified data delivery infrastructure and continue to support information accessibility as part of action under SDG14.

It is extremely concerning that, despite technological advances, a combination of inflation and flat national funding means that there has been no significant growth in ocean observations in the last five years. One area that demands urgent attention is the enhancement of global, regional and coastal observing and forecasting capabilities for biogeochemistry.

Although there has been investment in biogeochemical sensors, they still represent a small fraction of the observing system; for example, only 7.5% of the current system measures dissolved oxygen and this figure drops even further for other biogeochemical variables.

To provide the baseline information needed to track ocean carbon and oxygen levels, we need a significant increase in both biological and biogeochemical observations.

Another missing piece of the puzzle is the 75% of the ocean floor that remains unmapped. New technologies and partnerships are mobilizing and 5.4 million km2 of new data have been obtained since 2022, but there is still a long way to go. Greater global efforts to expand our knowledge of the seafloor are essential and must be spread across both hemispheres.

A primary driver of the North-South disparity in ocean prediction is the need for extensive supercomputing infrastructure. New forecasting systems using AI models promise to reduce this imbalance. With these data-driven systems, a ten-day forecast can be computed in less than a minute, and there is potential for AI-based forecasts to enlarge the limits of predictability up to 60 days. This would help safeguard coastal cities and build climate resilience.

The United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development 2021-2030 is a chance to mobilize transformative changes in ocean forecasting by developing a new framework for ocean prediction and capitalizing on key opportunities, including leveraging the advent of AI. This work has already begun, but too many communities are still not benefiting from sophisticated coastal forecasting.

We call on G20 leaders to prioritize ocean observation, data management and prediction as they take action to meet their commitment to the SDGs and global challenges. Global cooperation and investment in prediction technology and equitable access to ocean data will bring multiple, long-term benefits to millions of people across the world. It’s time to bridge the North-South divide and advance equitable ocean prediction for a safer, more sustainable future.

Mathieu Belbéoch, World Meteorological Organization, OceanOPS; Emma Heslop, Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO.

IPS UN Bureau