GO-SHIP (The Global Ocean Ship-based Hydrographic Investigations Program) is a multidisciplinary project to monitor ocean/climate changes. So far, this program has involved twelve countries and completed/planned 116 cruises. Participation countries are United States, United Kingdom, Japan, Canada, Germany, Spain, Australia, Norway, France, South Africa, Ireland and Sweden. Most of the cruises are completed by United States, United Kingdom, Japan, Canada, Germany and Spain.

Background

During 1872 and 1876, ''Challenger'' expedition started the modern marine survey and marked the foundation of

oceanography Oceanography (), also known as oceanology, sea science, ocean science, and marine science, is the scientific study of the ocean, including its physics, chemistry, biology, and geology. It is an Earth science, which covers a wide range of to ...

. Since then, scientific exploration of the oceans have made many discoveries. At the end of the 19th century, America built the to carry out ocean surveys. In 1893, Norwegian scientist

Fridtjof Nansen Fridtjof Wedel-Jarlsberg Nansen (; 10 October 1861 – 13 May 1930) was a Norwegian polymath and Nobel Peace Prize laureate. He gained prominence at various points in his life as an explorer, scientist, diplomat, humanitarian and co-founded the ...

fixed his ''Fram'' in the Arctic ice-cap for three years to undertake long-term observations of oceanographic, meteorological and astronomical data. One of the first acoustic measurements of the ocean floor was in 1919. From 1925 to 1927, the ''Meteor'' expedition used echo sounders to measure 70000 ocean depth measurements and explore the

Mid-Atlantic Ridge The Mid-Atlantic Ridge is a mid-ocean ridge (a Divergent boundary, divergent or constructive Plate tectonics, plate boundary) located along the floor of the Atlantic Ocean, and part of the List of longest mountain chains on Earth, longest mountai ...

. In 1953,

Maurice Ewing William Maurice "Doc" Ewing (May 12, 1906 – May 4, 1974) was an American geophysicist and oceanographer. Ewing has been described as a pioneering geophysicist who worked on the research of seismic reflection and refraction in ocean bas ...

and Bruce Heezen discovered the global ridge system extending along the Mid Atlantic Ridge. In 1960,

Harry Hammond Hess Harry Hammond Hess (May 24, 1906 – August 25, 1969) was an American geologist and a United States Navy officer in World War II who is considered one of the "founding fathers" of the unifying theory of plate tectonics. He published theories on s ...

developed the seafloor spreading theory by ocean exploration.

Deep Sea Drilling Project The Deep Sea Drilling Project (DSDP) was an ocean drilling project operated from 1968 to 1983. The program was a success, as evidenced by the data and publications that have resulted from it. The data are now hosted by Texas A&M University, alt ...

started in 1968. In the recent years, oceanographic investigation has revealed that ocean environment is changing, like

Ocean acidification Ocean acidification is the ongoing decrease in the pH of the Earth's ocean. Between 1950 and 2020, the average pH of the ocean surface fell from approximately 8.15 to 8.05. Carbon dioxide emissions from human activities are the primary cause of ...

, water temperature,

Carbon cycle The carbon cycle is a part of the biogeochemical cycle where carbon is exchanged among the biosphere, pedosphere, geosphere, hydrosphere, and atmosphere of Earth. Other major biogeochemical cycles include the nitrogen cycle and the water cycl ...

Sea level rise The sea level has been rising from the end of the last ice age, which was around 20,000 years ago. Between 1901 and 2018, the average sea level rose by , with an increase of per year since the 1970s. This was faster than the sea level had e ...

. Oceanographers are trying to find solutions to these changes by ocean exploration. However, it is hard to understand the whole system in one single subject because the ocean environment is balanced by both its physical conditions and chemical conditions, which is an essential factor for the diversities of marine biology. For example, if the temperature in the ocean surface rises, it would affect the

Nutrient A nutrient is a substance used by an organism to survive, grow and reproduce. The requirement for dietary nutrient intake applies to animals, plants, fungi and protists. Nutrients can be incorporated into cells for metabolic purposes or excret ...

s distributions,

Mixed layer The oceanic or limnological mixed layer is a layer in which active turbulence has homogenized some range of depths. The surface mixed layer is a layer where this turbulence is generated by winds, surface heat fluxes, or processes such as evaporat ...

depth,

Ocean current An ocean current is a continuous, directed movement of seawater generated by a number of forces acting upon the water, including wind, the Coriolis effect, breaking waves, cabbeling, and temperature and salinity differences. Depth contours, sh ...

, pH conditions,

Salinity Salinity () is the saltiness or amount of salt (chemistry), salt dissolved in a body of water, called saline water (see also soil salinity). It is usually measured in g/L or g/kg (grams of salt per liter/kilogram of water; the latter is dimensio ...

distributions and so on. Those series of ocean environment changes could even cause dramatic decrease of some

Species A species () is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate sexes or mating types can produce fertile offspring, typically by sexual reproduction. It is the basic unit of Taxonomy (biology), ...

and effect on the entire

Food web A food web is the natural interconnection of food chains and a graphical representation of what-eats-what in an ecological community. Position in the food web, or trophic level, is used in ecology to broadly classify organisms as autotrophs or he ...

in the ocean. Scientists have many assumptions and predictions about the consequences of climate changes in ocean but only by long-term ocean exploration can testify these assumptions. On the other hand, the ocean is large, which accounts for about 97.2% of the Earth's water resources and covers more than 70% of the Earth's surface (

Water distribution on Earth Most water in atmosphere of Earth, Earth's atmosphere and Earth's crust, crust comes from saline seawater, while fresh water accounts for nearly 1% of the total. The vast bulk of the water on Earth is saline water, saline or salt water, with an a ...

), and connected with each other. If one of the oceans changes, the others would also be influenced. Thus it is necessary to use global ocean data to measure how one change can have influence on the others. However, ocean exploration is costly and no one single country can afford continuous yearly global ocean cruises themselves. Therefore, GO-SHIP as one of global ocean observation and exploration programs was launched. Except for GO-SHIP, there are other programs such as

World Ocean Circulation Experiment The World Ocean Circulation Experiment (WOCE) was a component of the international World Climate Research Program, and aimed to establish the role of the World Ocean in the Earth's climate system. WOCE's field phase ran between 1990 and 1998, and ...

, Tropical Ocean Global Atmosphere program,

Argo (oceanography) Argo is an international programme for researching the ocean. It uses profiling floats to observe temperature, salinity and currents. Recently it has observed bio-optical properties in the Earth's oceans. It has been operating since the early 2 ...

, NPOCE, Global Ocean Observing System and

International Ocean Discovery Program The International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) is an international marine research collaboration dedicated to advancing scientific understanding of the Earth through drilling, coring, and monitoring the subseafloor. The research enabled by IODP ...

Contributions and discoveries

GO-SHIP data have suggested that from the 1990s to 2000 the deep (z > 2000 m) has warmed by absorbing some of the extra heat in system... The GO-SHIP global sampling has proven that the warming is obviously larger in regions of the Antarctic Bottom Water (AABW) especially the Southern Ocean near AABW Text was copied from this source, which is available under
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
An anthropogenic storage rate of 2.9 (± 0.4) Pg C year-1 for the most recent decade. An ocean mean annual uptake rate equates to approximately 27% of the total anthropogenic carbon emissions over 1994 to 2010.

Global Cruise Plan

The Cruise Plan includes completed and planned during 2014–2027.The table was updated in May 2022 Reference sections of 2012-2023 survey by GO-SHIP

References

{{reflist Oceanography Research projects Oceanographic expeditions