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The oceans provide many important functions within the Earth system including strong coupling with weather and climate dynamics, providing food and energy resources, supporting trade and commerce, offering extensive stabilization for variations in our environment and being a resource for biodiversity. The need for improved coordination in ocean observations is more urgent now given the issues of climate change, sustainable food sources and increased need for energy. Ocean researchers must work across disciplines to provide policy makers with clear and understandable assessments of the state of the ocean. The goal of the RCN is to foster a broad, multi-disciplinary dialogue, enabling more effective use of ocean observing systems, consistent with national and international efforts, to inform societal decisions. In achieving these objectives, the RCN will motivate new research outcomes, provide wider visibility for the value and impacts of ocean observations and encourage a new generation of scientists to focus on the oceans and their challenges.

New technologies and approaches are emerging to vastly improve ocean observations. Cabled observatories are an example of a paradigm shift, providing a relative abundance of power and bandwidth for observations covering scales from cm to km and times from seconds to decades. Sensors traditionally only available in laboratories can now be adapted for in-situ observations. The potential for interdisciplinary collaboration is significant. To leverage this, an ocean observation Research Coordination Network (RCN:OceanObsNetwork) is proposed.

In this website you will find more information about this project, its participants and the activities.

The RCN:OceanObsNetwork is supported financially by a US National Science Foundation Award (more here)

 

RCN:OceanObs Plenary Meeting, 2 December 2012, San Francisco

 

 

Blue Marvel – Ocean Mysteries
In a collaboration of the US National Science Foundation, IEEE and the Group on Earth 
Observations, the NSF-funded Ocean Research Collaboration Network is sponsoring a web-based seminar series “Blue Marvel – Ocean Mysteries.”  The series will look at the ocean and its impact on us - from life in the ocean to human life on Earth.  The webinar series will continue on a monthly basis the first week of each month except December with presentations from leaders in ocean exploration and research.  For more information and access to the webinar, go to www.oceanmysteries.net.

The first of these web-based seminars, “Oceans, Climate and Human Health: the cholera paradigm”  by Dr. Rita Colwell was given on Tuesday,  October 16 2012.  To listen to the presentation, please go to: https://cc.readytalk.com/play?id=4wtmd6. For additional instructions on playback, click here: https://core.readytalk.com/help/ArchivePlaybackInfo.html

Dr. Colwell was the 11th director of the United States’ National Science Foundation from 1998 to 2004 before becoming Chief Scientist at Canon U.S. Life Sciences. Dr. Colwell is an internationally recognized authority on cholera and infectious diseases and has remarkable understanding of the complex interplay of the “Earth system.”  


The second of these web-based seminars, “From Chemistry to Antarctica to Scripps Oceanography: One Journey” will be presented by Dr. Tony Haymet on Thursday November 8 at 12 noon EDT/17:00 UTC. 

Tony Haymet is Director of Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Vice Chancellor for Marine Sciences and Dean of the Graduate School of Marine Sciences at University of California, San Diego. He is co-founder and vice chair of CleanTECH San Diego, a business organization devoted to climate change issues. He is on the board of the Consortium for Ocean Leadership, Partnership for Observation of the Global Oceans and other organizations. Dr. Haymet is a distinguished researcher with more than 165 peer-reviewed articles and numerous Op-Ed pieces in leading newspapers around the world. He was formerly Chief of Marine and Atmospheric Science and then the Science and Policy Director at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) in Australia. Dr. Haymet is a tenured Professor of Oceanography at Scripps, and of Chemistry & Biochemistry at UCSD. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago and a Doctor and Bachelor of Science from the University of Sydney.

Please find the presentation here

"Going The Last Seven Miles: A Personal Odyssey" presented by Dr. Don Walsh

Dr.(Captain) Walsh was United States's first deep submersible pilot. In January 1960, he and Jacques Piccard dove the Bathyscaph Trieste to the deepest part of the ocean, seven miles into the Marianas Trench. Since then Dr. Walsh has participated in diving operations with more than two dozen manned submersibles piloting seven of them. He has also been active in the design, manufacture and operation of manned and unmanned submersibles. As well as having been dean of marine programme and professor of Ocean engineering at the University of Southersn California. He currently leads International Maritime, a consulting company based in Oregon. Dr. Walsh is the author of more than 200 ocean related publications. For his work, he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering and has received awards which include the Explorers Club - Expolorers medal, the Jules Verne Adventures “Etoile Polaire” medal and the National Geographic Society's Hubert Medal

Please find the presentation here