Trump cuts could blunt super El Niño forecasts

Ocean Observatories – Scientists warn that plans to dismantle parts of a U.S. ocean observation network—vital to forecasting El Niño, storms, and marine conditions—could sharply increase forecast errors and leave the United States with weaker early warning systems during a year exp

On a planet hurtling toward another potentially brutal El Niño year, the decision being debated offshore is as simple as it is consequential: what happens to the ocean’s “eyes and ears.”

European and American scientists say the Trump administration’s plan to dismantle an ocean observation system—one that feeds global climate and weather models—would “severely degrade” the accuracy of weather predictions and El Niño forecasts. They warn the impact wouldn’t stay in academic journals. It could ripple into storm preparedness, marine ecosystems, and economic planning from agriculture to insurance and disaster response.

At the center of the dispute is the Ocean Observatories Initiative, run by the U.S. National Science Foundation. The system is a vast network of seafloor instruments. underwater gliders. and moored surface platforms that supplies data to researchers. policymakers. educators. and mariners worldwide. It covers both U.S. coastlines and stretches into the North Atlantic and the Southern Ocean.

Decommissioning it would remove a major component of the Global Ocean Observing System, a robotic fleet of floats, moored buoys, and research vessels that experts describe as the “eyes and ears” of the ocean—data the warning systems built on it rely on to “save lives.”

The stakes are particularly sharp because the observations help measure ocean heat content. a key indicator of what’s happening not only in the ocean but across the entire climate system. Sabrina Speich. an expert in global ocean monitoring at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris and chair of the ocean expert panel of the Global Climate Observing System. said ocean heat content is “the most robust indicator of climate change we have — not just of what is happening in the ocean. but of the entire climate system.”.

She pointed to vertical temperature profiles that provide ocean heat content—“among the simplest measurements we can make. ” according to Speich—and said the consequences of losing them are immediate. “Lose them. and you lose your ability to track not just ocean warming but the climate system as a whole — they are a proxy for variables that become unavailable the moment the observations stop. ” Speich said. “Forecasts would continue — but they would degrade, sometimes dangerously so.”.

Speich added that atmospheric observations alone are not sufficient. Ocean data, she said, is “fundamental to early warning systems for tropical storms, cyclones and El Niño,” and the harm would have costs inside the United States, including agriculture, insurance, and disaster response.

Research published last month suggests the degradation would be severe. The planned removal of U.S. observations. according to that work. would lead to a massive increase in error in the annual estimates of ocean heating rates. Researchers found that losing U.S. ocean observations would be worse than randomly losing 80 percent of all ocean data worldwide. The study also warned that the loss would degrade the forecast and early warning systems used for storms. tropical cyclones. and El Niño.

Speich said the timing matters even more in a year expected to bring “supercharged” weather extremes. Removing U.S. observations, she warned, could also “lose the ability to see it coming clearly to act in time.”

The practical impact, Speich said, lands first on farmers. “Farmers in the US and across South America use El Niño forecasts to decide what to plant and when — whether to expect drought or flooding shapes every agricultural decision months in advance,” Speich said.

To understand why that matters, it helps to look at what happened in the last strong El Niño. The most recent El Niño, which hit in 2023–2024, was one of the five strongest on record and contributed to 2024’s record-breaking increase in global temperature.

The new research put a number on the measurement risk: removing U.S. observations would produce a 163 percent increase in error for annual ocean heating rates.

In parallel, Europe is moving to strengthen its own ocean monitoring. On Thursday. the European Union said it would boost its monitoring of the world’s oceans by investing in a $107 million initiative called OceanEye. more than half of which will go to the Global Ocean Observing System. The European Commission said the announcement was long-planned and not a direct response to the U.S. move.

One U.S. engineer who co-authored the research paper offered a sharper critique. John P. Abraham, a professor of engineering at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota, described the U.S. administration’s move to dismantle the $368 Ocean Observatories Initiative system as “penny-wise, pound foolish.”.

Abraham said the U.S. government wants to save less than a billion in sensors—described as the “eyes and ears of the ocean”—while the country faces “hundreds of billions in climate costs per year.” He argued the cost of the observation system is a fraction of the climate costs from hurricanes and storms that hit the United States.

He pointed to the scale of recent losses. The U.S. suffered more than 400 climate and weather disasters where damages exceeded or reached $1 billion between 1980 and 2024. In 2024 alone, the costs of such disasters amounted to $177 billion.

Abraham tied the critique to another retreat in climate-related services. A “billion-dollar climate and weather product. ” managed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. will no longer be updated due to “evolving priorities. ” according to a note on its website. Abraham described it and the broader shift as part of a larger pattern. saying the system is “quite an inexpensive way to reduce climate-related costs.” He added. “This is not about saving money. this is about killing climate science research.”.

Across the Atlantic, European officials emphasized the limits of what can be replaced. Samantha Burgess. the strategic climate lead at the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S)—the European Union’s Earth observation system that integrates European space data with in situ measurements—said ocean observations are “irreplaceable” because “we can’t see the deep ocean from space.”.

Burgess said the observations “save lives” by warning people of severe storms and urged international coordination. “We need international cooperation to get the best available observations to mitigate risks in our changing world. Without ocean observations we are flying blind,” she said.

The pushback from Washington is less absolute in language than the scientific warnings. A statement earlier this week from the National Science Foundation said the program was not being cancelled entirely and described the plans as a “descope. ” meaning a reduction of elements. The statement did not make clear what data collection capacity would be left.

Taken together, the debate is turning on a single, uncomfortable question: when a system designed to monitor the ocean’s heat and drive early warnings is reduced at the edge of a forecast-heavy year, how much clarity will be lost—and how late will that loss arrive?

Ocean Observatories Initiative OOI National Science Foundation El Niño forecasts ocean heat content NOAA Global Ocean Observing System GOOS OceanEye Copernicus C3S hurricanes tropical cyclones