MYOCEAN : Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service: Sustainability and Dependency on Future Satellite Missions
Dorandeu, Joel
Mercator-Ocean, FRANCE

The pre-operational Marine Environment Monitoring Service of Copernicus (used to be called GMES) is currently provided through the EU-funded MyOcean Service (through the MyOcean2 project following the former MyOcean project) which delivers regular and systematic reference information on the state of the oceans and regional seas. The MyOcean Service addresses four main domains:
* Marine safety (e.g. marine operations, oil spill combat, ship routing, defense, search & rescue...)
* Marine resources (e.g. fish stock management...)
* Marine and coastal environment (e.g. water quality, pollution, coastal activities...)
* Climate, seasonal and weather forecasting (e.g. climate monitoring, ice survey, seasonal forecasting...)
After data acquisition from the ground segment of the space-based (with processing levels L1 and L2) and in situ networks as well as acquisition of atmospheric forcing data (winds, temperatures, fluxes) from Meteorological Services, MyOcean processes these data into quality-controlled datasets (with processing levels L3 and L4) at Thematic Data Assembly centers (sea surface temperature, ocean colour, sea level, sea ice, winds and in-situ data). MyOcean runs numerical ocean models in near real time assimilating the above thematic data to generate analyses and forecasts for the Arctic Ocean, Baltic Sea, Atlantic European North West shelf Ocean, Atlantic Iberian Biscay Irish Ocean, Mediterranean Sea, Black Sea and global ocean. Reprocessing and reanalysis are also performed. MyOcean products are available through the Interactive Catalogue provided on the www.myocean.eu web portal. The MyOcean catalogue of products displays the following parameters: Ocean Temperature, Ocean Salinity, Ocean Currents, Sea Ice, Sea Level, Ocean Winds, Ocean Optics, Ocean Chemistry, Ocean Biology and Ocean Chlorophyll.
ESA, through the GMES Space Component, coordinates supply of data from space-based observations in response to the GMES Service needs. Different Earth Observation (EO) sources, ESA, EUMETSAT, CNES, and other Third Party Missions are used by the MyOcean Marine Service to produce observational core products and to assimilate into ocean models for analyses, forecasts and validation. The sustainability, operationality and quality of the Marine Service are strongly depending on the current and future satellite missions planned for launch in 2013 and later. In this context, an overview of the current use of EO data by MyOcean is given, highlighting the main issues and risks of the current situation. The impact of the Envisat loss on the catalogue of MyOcean Services and the replacement solutions that have been found in coordination with Space Agencies are also described as an illustration of the dependency of the service on Space missions. Then, the near future for Space data provision is addressed, more specifically focusing on the Sentinel missions developed for the needs of the GMES program. Sentinel3, dedicated to the ocean, as well as Sentinel1 are the two most important missions for MyOcean. The Sentinels, among other satellites, will allow building new products, sustaining existing ones as well as improving the quality of products with observations Ocean Temperature, Ocean Currents and Sea Level; Sea Ice measurements, Ocean Winds, Ocean Optics and Ocean Chlorophyll.