THERE is now a website where, at least theoretically, anyone can download near-real time data on ocean temperatures, salinity and currents for the Australian marine environment.
The Australian government contributed $52 million to the development of the Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS) developed by the University of Tasmania with support from CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research. According to government information, “support will also be provided for the eMarine Information Infrastructure to store, analyse, retrieve and share data once it has been collected”.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD has worked in industry and government. She is currently researching a novel technique for long-range weather forecasting funded by the B. Macfie Family Foundation.
It’s amazing our government can get this off the ground, yet they drop “Grocery-Watch” because it’s too hard.
I guess there’s no money in watching groceries. They should have called it Anthropogenic Grocery-Watch. (Makes a nice acronym & money will be thrown at it).
Here is a link to things that have been happening a bit to the south of Australia:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHvrjX7AP-8&feature=player_embedded
A survey of the site shows that the buzz word to get any science program off the ground today really is ‘climate’.
It does look like a NOAA-style effort to monitor the oceans. It will be interesting to see how it develops.