The New York Times reports:

The Trump administration is abandoning its plan to dismantle a $368 million ocean monitoring system critical to understanding climate change and marine ecosystems, bowing to a bipartisan backlash on Capitol Hill.

The National Science Foundation had said in May that it would begin removing hundreds of underwater instruments this month that collect data on coastal flooding, marine heat waves and other climate and weather events.

But the agency announced on Thursday that it will pause efforts to take apart the system, known as the Ocean Observatories Initiative, while convening an expert panel to determine its future.

“Effective immediately, N.S.F. will not proceed with further removal or de-scoping of equipment,” the agency said in a statement.

The Senate passed a measure Wednesday that would block the government from dismantling the system, with lawmakers in both parties warning that the action would be illegal and would threaten the safety of coastal communities. The Trump administration had also tried to cut the program’s funds the last two years, but Congress restored the money both times.

In May, the science foundation had said it would send ships to start pulling up instruments anchored to the sea floor off the coasts of Oregon, Washington State, Alaska, North Carolina, and an area between Greenland and Iceland known as the Irminger Sea.

For the past decade, scientists have used data from these instruments to understand how the ocean is absorbing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, how marine heat waves could affect fisheries and how soon a vital ocean current could collapse.

Fishermen have also checked the real-time, publicly available data on wind and wave conditions before heading to sea. And meteorologists have used these observations to improve forecasts of disasters like hurricanes and tsunamis.

The National Science Foundation said on Thursday that it already had pulled some buoys, sensors and other instruments from the water off the coasts of Oregon and Washington State, but it was “developing plans to redeploy the equipment after servicing.”

The Senate on Wednesday passed the measure to preserve the system by unanimous consent, essentially an agreement by all senators to bypass debate. Though the measure faced an uncertain fate in the House, it was the latest moment when Congress flexed its power of the purse to thwart the Trump administration’s attempts to cut climate and environmental programs. [Continue reading…]