A screenshot of the interactive map on the 2018 Ocean Observing System
Report Card website.

The Joint Technical Commission for Oceanography and Marine Meteorology (JCOMM) of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and UNESCO’s Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) have released the 2018 Ocean Observing System Report Card.

The report details the JCOMM global observation system, which is comprised of networks and sensors that provide information about atmosphere, ocean, ice, global weather, maritime hazards and maritime commerce, as well as providing data in various time and space scales used for a variety of ocean sciences.

According to the report, “the in situ global ocean observing system is composed of multiple platforms, including ship-based weather stations, moored and drifting buoys, autonomous profiling floats, dedicated research vessels and tide gauges, which observe a range of essential environmental variables. Although the in situ ocean observation system provides many fundamental observations, it remains vulnerable, as many of its components are reliant on short-term commitments…”

In addition to assessing the health of the system and discussing future projections, the report includes an interactive online map with near real-time data and filters that can be turned on and off to see different layers of the ocean observing system.

View the data and read the full report at http://www.jcommops.org/reportcard2018/.