The Importance of Marine Research Infrastructures in Capturing Processes and Impacts of Extreme Events

Abstract

Extreme events have long been underestimated in the extent to which they shape the surface of our planet, our environment, its ecological integrity, and the sustainability of human society. Extreme events are by definition rarely observed, of significant impact and, as a result of their spatiotemporal range, not always easily predicted. Extremes may be short-term catastrophic events such as tsunamis, or long-term evolving events such as those linked to climate change; both modify the environment, producing irreversible changes or regime shifts. Whatever the driver that triggers the extreme event, the damages are often due to a combination of several processes and their impacts can affect large areas with secondary events (domino effect), whose effects in turn may persist well beyond the duration of the trigger event itself. Early studies of extreme events were limited to opportunistic approaches: observations were made within the context of naturally occurring events with high societal impact. Given that climate change is now moving us out of a relatively static climate regime during the development of human civilization, extreme events are now a function of underlying climate shifts overlain by catastrophic processes. Their impacts are often due to synergistic factors, all relevant in understanding process dynamics; therefore, an integrated methodology has become essential to enhance the reliability of new assessments and to develop strategies to mitigate societal impacts. Here we summarize the current state of extreme event monitoring in the marine system, highlighting the advantages of a multidisciplinary approach using Research Infrastructures for providing the temporal and spatial resolution required to monitor Earth processes and enhance assessment of associated impacts.

The EMSO Generic Instrument Module (EGIM): Standardized and Interoperable Instrumentation for Ocean Observation

“…The European Multidisciplinary Seafloor and water column Observatory (EMSO) European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC) is a distributed research infrastructure, consisting of 14 instrumented sites 5 , also known as Regional Facilities, which measure a wide range of variables focused on the Essential Ocean Variables. Measurements are made throughout the water column to the seabed and address broad scientific disciplines including meteorology, physical oceanography, biogeochemistry, ecology and geo-hazards (Best et al, 2014(Best et al, , 2016Lo Bue et al, 2021).…”

“…The continuous, high-resolution time series data makes long-term fixed-point observatories uniquely insightful in resolving decadal environmental trends required to understand effects of global climate change (Henson et al, 2016). They can record long-term variations over hours, days, months, seasons, years, as well as sudden, unpredictable events such as earthquakes and tsunamis (Lo Bue et al, 2021). Furthermore, the effective footprint estimated through modeling suggests that data from open-ocean observatories can be representative of wide areas for a variety of biogeochemistry parameters in surface waters (Henson et al, 2016).…”

Horizon Scan on the Benefits of Ocean Seasonal Forecasting in a Future of Increasing Marine Heatwaves for Aotearoa New Zealand

“…The benefits of observing MHWs provide in situ mechanistic knowledge of MHWs and improve parameterisation of upper ocean processes to increase model skill, and ultimately seasonal forecasts of MHWs. As these do not presently exist, sustained observations are critical to gain a dynamical understanding of MHWs (Lo Bue et al, 2021). With both surface and subsurface MHW signals evident in the Tasman Sea (Youstina and Schaeffer, 2019), robotic sampling is proving valuable for event-based sampling (Testor et al, 2019).…”

Editorial: Impact of Deep Oceanic Processes on Circulation and Climate Variability: Examples From the Mediterranean Sea and the Global Ocean

“…The existing gaps highlight how much the integrated and multidisciplinary approach in the study of deep ocean processes is now an urgent question, both for the knowledge improvement and for the efficient streamlining of the existing observational infrastructures such as EMSO and Deep-Argo (Gasparin et al, 2020;Lo Bue et al, 2021). Besides, due to its intrinsic characteristics and considering its short-scale variability (Malanotte-Rizzoli et al, 2014), the Mediterranean area results in a suitable area for developing new integrated strategies able to link theory, observations, and implementation of new numerical models in the near future.…”