Operationalize Ocean Climate Monitoring

A rapidly changing climate requires timely and tailored monitoring and processing services to provide critical information for all purposes. While much of this is in place for the atmosphere, it is generally lacking for the ocean. Most ocean climate indicators come from research projects, which limits the community’s ability to provide continuous, traceable, and timely information for climate-risk assessment, projections, and decision- making. Operationalizing ocean climate monitoring is demanding and requires a systematic transition from research-oriented data product production to sustained operational services. Observational activities, data management, and data processing flows should be routinely and rapidly updated, transparently maintained, quality-controlled, and reliably and promptly delivered. Key barriers include limited access to timely climate-quality observations due to lengthy post-processing chains with manual intervention, and delays in translating research advances into operational practices. We recommend sustaining funding for capacity building and close collaboration between research and operational organizations to improve the operationalization of ocean observing activities, including improving international data coordination, enabling continuous climate-quality observations, and strengthening the rapid generation and evaluation of data products based on international standards.