Nature (vol. 433, No. 7028, 24 February 2005)

24.2 Editorial 785 AM 22/2/05 2:17 pm Page 785 24 February 2005 Volume 433 Issue no 7028 Making sense of the world The Earth and our effects on it require monitoring and analysis worthy of their complexity and importance. Now is the time to bring global observation into the twenty-first century. ast week, ministers from some 60 nations gathered in Brussels to create an integrated Earth observation system, the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS). December’s tsunami in the Indian Ocean has catapulted GEOSS from relative obscurity to high on the international political agenda. This was clear from the presence of Carlos Gutierrez, the US commerce secretary, on his first overseas visit since being sworn in on 7 February, as well as science ministers from around the planet (see page 789). The tsunami disaster highlighted the power of Earth observation data, but it has also thrown a harsh spotlight on the patchiness and rudimentary nature of current systems for understanding complex Earth systems and applying that knowledge to agriculture, management of water resources, early-warning systems for natural disasters, and more. Take ocean currents, which affect climate by shifting large volumes of warm and cold water around the planet. A United Nations body set up in 1991 to observe, model and analyse the world’s oceans, the Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS), has been chronically underfunded and has installed barely half of the monitoring instruments envisaged.Similar inadequacies undermine the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) set up in 1992. Speak to people working in global networks in almost any area of Earth observation and the message is the same: behind the stunning images and model simulations of planet Earth lies a much more disconnected picture. Countries and agencies tend to pursue their own agendas, resulting in duplicat