NSF to Pull 900+ Ocean Sensors Tracking Atlantic Current Near Collapse

The National Science Foundation is shutting down the Ocean Observatories Initiative, recovering more than 900 instruments deployed off Oregon, Washington, Alaska, North Carolina, and between Greenland and Iceland over the next 15 months. The system launched in 2016 with a 25-year design lifespan and feeds research on the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), the current system that regulates northern European climate and may be approaching a tipping point that would shut it down.

The move follows Trump’s dismissal of the NSF’s independent oversight board. Researchers warn that losing a decade-early continuous observation network leaves climate scientists effectively blind to ocean state changes at a moment when AMOC instability makes sustained monitoring most valuable. Congressional Democrats, including Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, have signaled they will contest the decommissioning.