Benefits of Ocean Observing Catalog

The ocean is the highway of our world economy and provides vital goods and services. From carrying cargo to creating jobs to shaping the weather and climate, our understanding of how the ocean works, how it moves, how it changes, and how we can best work in, on, and around it depends on observations.

Sustained operational ocean observations, measurements, and forecasts provide an essential input to ocean scientific research. They support a wide range of societal and economic benefits related to safety, operational efficiency, regulation, and management of activities around, on, in, and under the ocean.

Although it is generally accepted that sustained operational ocean observations deliver substantial socioeconomic benefits, there has been no comprehensive resource detailing such benefits in a consistent framework and available to the ocean community from a single source. Until now.