The June 10 Metro article “As El Niño develops, strange things are afoot,” about the weather phenomenon’s early effects on South America, was disturbing. Just as it becomes critical for scientists to understand every detail of the potentially historic El Niño event currently developing, the Trump administration is dismantling a $386 million network of more than 900 ocean sensors funded by the National Science Foundation. The timing of this could not be worse. According to the Associated Press, these observatories track everything from ocean circulation and marine ecosystems to climate change and extreme weather. The network’s data has been freely available and informed more than 500 scientific publications, and it was slated to run for an additional 15 to 20 years.
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