The year of the pandemic has been challenging for everyone. When the COOLroom was formed, one goal was to develop an automated system that minimized the amount of time humans need to be at sea to collect ocean data and use it to educate our future generations. Given social distancing and safety considerations, COVID-19 provided a test of the resilience of the COOL network. Throughout the pandemic, the network continued to collect data using satellites, HF-Radar, gliders, and meteorological instruments, which fueled ocean and atmospheric models.
Many of the results presented in this annual report highlight the ability of modern tools to enable us to now sample extreme locations of our planet even under extreme local conditions. This ability is becoming available at a critical time as the ocean globally continues to exhibit accelerating changes. These technologies will be critical to meet the challenges laid out in the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development: 2021-2030.
The UN Ocean Decade is focused on providing a framework to ensure that ocean sciences support actions to sustainably manage the ocean and help achieve the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
The COOLroom is well positioned to help lead by example the co-development of the global community’s response to the UN challenge.
COOLroom Annual Report 2020-2021: