Last week in Cape Town, ministers of more than 70 countries gathered to talk about the biggest acronym in Earth sciences: GEOSS, the Global Earth-Observing System of Systems.
Touted as a worldwide network of ocean, atmospheric and terrestrial sensors, GEOSS is supposed to hook the planet together in one big harmonious Earth-monitoring whole. Two years into its ten-year implementation plan, the project is already bragging about its 'first 100 steps' towards that goal.
These include GeoNetCast, a web portal to broadcast information from Earth-monitoring systems around the world; SERVIR, a programme to help Central America improve its monitoring of forest fires and tropical storms; and the agreement of a Brazilian–Chinese venture to share satellite data with Africa for free. All showcase the main point of GEOSS, which is to serve nine 'societal benefit areas', such as protecting water and energy resources and reducing deaths caused by natural disasters.
The societal focus of GEOSS has turned off some scientists who had hoped it might provide new funding streams for their remote-sensing work, says José Achache, the secretariat of the Group on Earth Observations in Geneva, Switzerland, the body that oversees GEOSS. And it's not uncommon to hear grumbling about the programme, even among climate scientists. “It has never reached anything like its promise,” says Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado.
Still, many say that GEOSS has managed to at least focus interest at the ministerial level on Earth monitoring, and as such has raised the political profile of the Earth sciences. And at the very least, its existence has prompted member countries to get their own Earth-monitoring houses in order.
A.W.
