Big Data in Ocean Observation: Opportunities and Challenges

Ocean observation plays an essential role in ocean exploration. Ocean science is entering into big data era with the exponentially growth of information technology and advances in ocean observatories. Ocean observatories are collections of platforms capable of carrying sensors to sample the ocean over appropriate spatio-temporal scales. Data collected by these platforms help answer a range of fundamental and applied research questions. Given the huge volume, diverse types, sustained measurement and potential uses of ocean observing data, it is a typical kind of big data, namely marine big data. The traditional data-centric infrastructure is insufficient to deal with new challenges arising in ocean science. This paper discusses some possible new strategies to solve marine big data challenges in the phases of data storage, data computing and analysis. A geological example illustrates the significant use of marine big data. Finally, we highlight some challenges and key issues in marine big data.