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GMES Fast Track

Marine Core Service

Strategic Implementation Plan*

2010 update2010 update VVeerrssiioonn,, 16/04/201016/04/2010

Author:Hans Dahlin, Chairman

of the Marine Core Service Implementation Group

* DISCLAIMER : this is a working paper of the Implementation Group on GMES “Land Monitoring”. It does NOT represent the opinion of the European Commission

OutlinesThe objective of the Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) is to provide, on a sustained basis, reliable and timely services related to environmental and security issues in support of public policy makers’ needs. GMES is an EU-led initiative, in which ESA implements the space component and the Commission manages actions for identifying and developing services, relying on both in-situ and space-borne remote sensing data. GMES will use, to the maximum extent possible, existing capacities in Member States or at European level.The implementation is starting with three “Fast Track” Services (FTS) addressing Land Monitoring, Marine Monitoring and Emergency Response.As announced in the Commission Communication in November 2005, the choice of these FTS has been driven by (i) their technical maturity, (ii) their uptake by the user communities (relevance for policy making and policy implementation); and (iii) existing conditions for long-term sustainability of demand and supply.After user consultation workshops organised in 2005, three Implementation Groups (IG), composed with representatives of the various user communities, were set up for these three FTS in 2006.In accordance with its terms of reference, each IG analyzed the main issues related to FTS implementation, including the scope of the service and its potential evolution, its functionality and architecture, its main structure and governance principles, as well as its requirements regarding observation infrastructure and data needs, data integration and information management issues.The IG capitalised on previous and ongoing research activities financed under EC (FP6) and ESA schemes (GMES Service Element (GSE)).The main outcomes of the IG analysis have been gathered in the enclosed Implementation Reports, which provide recommendations regarding the main FTS implementation issues based on the initial scope of the service (or “fast-track”) as well as its evolution.Special attention has been given to the functions and structuring of the FTS at European level. More specifically, the GMES services are structured around ‘Core’ and ‘Downstream’ service layers. ‘Core services’ are pan-European in scope and generic in nature. More specialised‘downstream services’ to meet the needs of a range of different users (e.g. national, regional or local) can be derived from them by further value-adding and customisation.As a user-driven initiative, GMES should ensure a continuous user uptake through constant consultation with users and integration of their changing needs in an iterative process.In the short term, the analysis included in IG reports will be used as a basis for current R&D and demonstration activities, in particular those that will be funded within the Space Theme of FP7. In the long-term, these reports will be fine-tuned through further interaction with user communities and consultation process and could contribute to the design of the overall GMES structure and governance.

Revised version following the comments from the GAC Delegations 1

GMES Fast Track Marine Core Service Strategic Implementation Plan

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ContentsExecutive Summary....................................................................................................... i1 Introduction............................................................................................................1

Purpose, scope & functionality of the MCS 1.1 GMES 1O bservational components of the MCS 1.2 Core Services 1Implementat ion plan 1.3 Downstream Sector 1Ma in gu idel ines .......................................................................................................1.4 Marine Core Service ........................................................................................2

Proposed strategy and appl ic ation ................................................................................2 Th e p urpose , sco p e a n d functionality o f th e M CS ..................................................4

Arc hitectur e imp lementation ..................................................................................2.1 Purpose ...........................................................................................................4Demonstration ........................................................................................................2.2 Th e natu re of the MCS .....................................................................................5MCS gover nance and related issues 2.3 Th e requirements for delivering a marine core service 7

Selection of op erator s2.3.1 Computer models 7Fu nding & Data Policy2.3.2 Computing facilities 7Conclusion ........................................................................................................2.3.3 Observations ................................................................................................7

1 Introductio n ..................................................................................................2.4 Geographical scope of marine core service .....................................................82 Th e p urpose , sco p e a n d functionality o f th e M CS ........................................2.5 Marine C ore S ervice Fun ctiona lity ...................................................................92.1 Purpose ........................................................................................................2.6 Th e c onc epts of u pstrea m providers, int ermedia te use rs and end use rs ......10

2.2 Th e natu re of the MCS ...........................................................................2.6.1 Upstream providers ...................................................................................102.3 Th e scope of th e MCS an d its rationale ..................................................2.6.2 intermediate users .....................................................................................11

2.4 Marine C ore S ervice Fun ctiona lity ................................................................2.7 Simu lations – how to respond t o ‘Wha t if?’ que st ions ...................................11

2.5 Th e c onc epts of u pstrea m providers, int ermedia te use rs & end use rs ...................3 The r equir ed obs ervationa l compo n ents ..............................................................13

2.6 Simu lations – how to respond t o ‘Wha t if?’ que st ions ..................................3.1 Th e required spac e in frastructu re .................................................................133 The r equir ed obs ervationa l compo n ents .....................................................3.2 Th e required in situ in fras truct ure ................................................................143.1 Th e required spac e in frastructu re ................................................................3.3 The Meteorological Forcing ...........................................................................15

3.2 Th e required in situ in fras truct ure ..........................................................................4 Th e Stra t egi c Im p l em e ntatio n P la n ......................................................................16

4 Th e Stra t egi c Im p l em e ntatio n P la n ..............................................................4.1 Princ iples an d s ource s of gu idanc e used .......................................................164.1 Princ iples an d s ource s of gu idanc e used ......................................................4.2 Foun dations of th e Marin e Core Se rvice ........................................................16

4.2 Foun dations of th e Marin e Core Se rvice ................................................4.2.1 Existing infr astr uc tur e ...............................................................................174.2.1 Existing infr astr uc tur e ...........................................................................4.2.2 Rel evant existing inf ormation services ......................................................184.2.2 Rel evant existing inf ormation services ..................................................4.2.3 Past and c urr ent R&D projects ...................................................................18

4.2.3 Past and c urr ent R&D projects .....................................................................4.3 T he proposed s trategy and it s applic ation ....................................................20

4.3 T he proposed s trategy and it s applic ation .............................................4.3.1 Arc hitectur e ...............................................................................................204.3.1 2 ..............................................................................................Prototype Architecture

244.3.2 Impl ementing the architectur e ..............................................................4.3.3 T he space inf r astr ucture ............................................................................264.3.34 The spacein situ infrastructure..................................................................294.3.4 T he in situ infr astruc tur e .......................................................................4.3.5 Data col lection , assembly and quality c ontrol ...........................................304.3.5 Data col lection , assembly and quality c ontrol .......................................4.3.6 Ocean modellin g and data assimilation .....................................................324.3.6 Ocean modellin g and7 ........................................................Raw data assimilation

344.3.78 Service generation, access, delivery and support.....................................344.3.89 Standards...................................................................................................36

4.4 Fun ding & Data Policy...................................................................................375 Governanc e a nd related is sues ....................................................................4.5 Funding .........................................................................................................38

5.1 Ac counta bilit y & Management struc tures ..............................................4.5.1 Marine core service ....................................................................................385.2 In tera ctions with in termedia te u sers .....................................................4.5.2 Downstream Services ................................................................................38

5.3 Crite ria for se le ct ing operat ors an d modification of the partnership ......................5 Governanc e a nd related is sues ............................................................................40

5.4 Conflic ts of interes t ......................................................................................5.1 EU procurement ............................................................................................40

6 Examples which test th e suitability o f t he strat egy in d eliver ing specif ic end- to- end services in and beyond 2008 ..........................................................5.1.1 Procurement or Grant ................................................................................406.1 In su pport of (the assu med) imple men tat ion of the Marine Environmen tal Stra tegy Direc tive an d othe r environment al protec tion policies. .....................5.1.2 Direct or devolved management ...............................................................40

6.1.1 S ervic e requir em ents ...................................................................................5.2 Consortium Structure ....................................................................................416.1.2 S peci fic p roduc t requi rem ents .....................................................................5.3 In tera ctions with downstream services .........................................................426.1.3 Observing sy stem requirem ents ..................................................................5.4 Crite ria for se le ct ing operat ors an d modification of the partnership .............426.1.4 Relevant c urrent c oordi na ting or ga nisations ...............................................5.5 Conflic ts of interes t .......................................................................................43

6.1.5 ..............................................................................................................................................End Examples which test th e suitability o f t he strat egy in d eliver ing specif ic end-to-end services in and beyond 2008...............................................................................44

6.2 Ice Services6.1 ......In su pport of (the assu med) imple men tat ion of the Marine Environmen tal Stra tegy Direc tive an d othe r environment al protec tion policies... . .44

6.2.1 Context ..................................................................................................6.1.1 S ervic e requir em ents .................................................................................446.1.2.2 .............................................................................................................................S ervic e S peci fic p roduc t requirements...................................................................456.21.3 S peci fic produc tObserving sy stem requirements......................................456.2.4 Obser ving sy stem requir ements ............................................................6.1.4 Relevant c urrent c oordi na ting or ga nisations .............................................46


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6.2.5 Relevant c urrent coordi na ting or ga nisations – ......................................6.1.5 End- to- end ser vic es ...................................................................................46

6.2.6 End-to-end services ......................................................................................6.2 Ice Services ...................................................................................................46

6.2.7 Benefits ..................................................................................................6.2.1 Context ......................................................................................................466.3 Oil s pill mon itoring .................................................................................6.2.2 S ervic e requir em ents .................................................................................486.3.1 Context ..................................................................................................6.2.3 S peci fic produc t r equir em ents ...................................................................486.3.2 S ervic e Requirem ents ............................................................................6.2.4 Obser ving sy stem requir ements ................................................................486.3.3 S pec ific Pr oduc t Requirem ents ..............................................................6.2.5 Relevant c urrent coordi na ting or ga nisations – ..........................................486.3.4 Obser ving Sys tem Requir ements ...........................................................6.2.6 End-to-end services ...................................................................................486.3.5 Relevant Cur rent Coor dina ting Or ga nisati ons .......................................6.2.7 Benefits ......................................................................................................49

6.3.6 End-to-end services ......................................................................................6.3 Oil s pill mon itoring ........................................................................................49

6.3.7 Benefi ts ..................................................................................................6.3.1 Context ......................................................................................................49GMES Fast Track Service Implementation Groups: Terms of Reference and composition and working methods of the Marine Core Service Implementation Group 6.3.2 ........................................................................................S ervic e Requirem ents 50Te rms of Re feren ce ..........................................................................................6.3.3 S pec ific Pr oduc t Requirem ents ..................................................................50Composition & workin g meth ods of the Marine C ore S ervice Implementation G roup 6.3.4 ....................................................................Obser ving Sys tem Requir ements 50Characterisation of M CS variables & p roducts ..................................................6.3.5 Relevant Cur rent Coor dina ting Or ga nisati ons ...........................................51Adopted Report from the Working Gr oup on Space Infrastr uctur e fo r th e G M E S Marin e Co r e Ser v ice .........................................................................................6.3.6 End-to-end services ...................................................................................51Execu tive Su mmary ..........................................................................................6.3.7 Benefi ts ......................................................................................................51

G eneral rec ommenda tions:GMES Fast Track Service Implementation Groups: Terms of Reference and composition and working methods of the Marine Core Service Implementation Group ................................................................................................53

S pec ific r ec ommenda tions: ...........................................................Te rms of Re feren ce ................................................................................................................................. 53Int roduc tion and man date of th e WG Composition & workin g meth ods of the Marine C ore S ervice Implementation G roup ........................................................................53

Main requirement s from th e MCS ............Characterisation of M CS variables & p roducts .................................................................................................................................... 55A3.4. Re view of Se nt ine l 3Adopted Report from the Working Gr oup on Space Infrastr uctur e fo r th e G M E S Marin e Co r e Ser v ice ........................................................57

Overvi ew of ES A S entinel 3 MRD ..................................................Execu tive Su mmary ................................................................................................................................. 57Altim etry ...........................................................................G eneral rec ommenda tions: ................................................................................................................................. 57SST ....................................................................................S pec ific r ec ommenda tions: ................................................................................................................................. 57

Ocean Col our .....................................................Int roduc tion and man date of th e WG ................................................................................................................................. 58Re commendat ions for th e J ason and METOP, MSG /MT G series and for non - European mis sions compleme ntary to Sentine l -3 . . .Main requirement s from th e MCS ................................................................................................................................. 58Jason- 3 ...............................................................................A3.4. Re view of Se nt ine l 3 ................................................................................................................................. 59

ReviewOvervi ew of ES A Sentinel 1 / SA R .......................................................3 MRD ............................................................................................................................. 59Other Europea n a nd non- Eur opea n SAR missions ......................................Altim etry ............................................................................................................................. 59Groun d Se gmen t (to be devel oped lat er) ...........................................................SST ............................................................................................................................. 60Su mmary of reco mmen dat ions ...........................................................Ocean Col our ............................................................................................................................. 62

Re feren cesRe commendat ions for th e J ason and METOP, MSG /MT G series and for non - European mis sions compleme ntary to Sentine l -3 ...........................................65

Adopted Report of the In situ Infrastructure Work ing Gro up .........................Jason- 3 ............................................................................................................................. 65

Perfo rmance & deployment ...............................................Review of S en tine l 1 / SA R ................................................................................................................................. 65Network design ...............................Other Europea n a nd non- Eur opea n SAR missions ................................................................................................................................. 68Data col lec tion & man ageme nt ...................Groun d Se gmen t (to be devel oped lat er) ................................................................................................................................. 68Tim eli ness ...................................................................Su mmary of reco mmen dat ions ................................................................................................................................. 68S ustainability .............................................................................................Re feren ces ................................................................................................................................. 69

Data mana gement .............Adopted Report of the In situ Infrastructure Work ing Gro up .................................................................................................................................... 73

Quality cont rol ..................................................................Perfo rmance & deployment ................................................................................................................................. 74

St an dardi s ation ................................................................................Network design ............................................................................................................................. 74

Data col lec tion & man ageme nt ...............................................................................75Tim eli ness .............................................................................................................75S ustainability ........................................................................................................75

Data mana gement ...................................................................................................76Quality cont rol .........................................................................................................77St an dardi s ation ........................................................................................................77


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Executive Summary

To be rewritten


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GMES Fast Track Marine Core Service Strategic Implementation Plan EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Page 3

1 IntroductionThe fo rmativ e Wo rks hop which l ed to the acc ep tance o f the M arine Cor e Serv ice (MC S) as a GME S Fas t Tr ack was held in Br uss el s on Octob er 27 - 28 2005. Subs eq uently a smal l Impl ementation Group (IP ) was set up to s up erv ise and v al idate the implementatio n o f the Serv ice, in op en coop eration with the rel ev ant user co mmunities. The Terms of Refer ence, co mpos ition and wo rking methods of the I G are reproduc ed at App end ix 1 to the repor t. The main outp ut of the IG to date is this Strategi c Implementation Plan and the suppo rting do cuments generated by wor king gro ups set up by the IG, subseq uently appr ov ed, and either inco rporated into or attached as app end ices to the Pl an. If end ors ed by the GMES Bureau and GME S Adv isory Council, the Pl an will p rov id e ratified guidel ines and prio ritis ation fo r impl ementation. In the s hor t term it is env isaged that it will guide cur rent R&D and demons tration activ ities being p urs ued with EC and ESA funding, in p articul ar thos e that will b e fund ed within the Space Theme o f FP 7. Howev er, it is hop ed that the Pl an will also prov ide a r oadmap for a l ong - term, s us tainabl e M arine Cor e Service abl e to s uppor t a wid e range of do wns tream s erv ices , s ome o f which can be seen to day but many of which will only emerge when the MC S is in plac e. With this in mind , an effo rt has b een mad e to d es cr ib e the ratio nal e for the guidel ines and priorities , no t s imply the propos al s thems elves . It is hop ed that the Strategic I mpl ementation Pl an will giv e co nfidenc e to the EC and Memb er States that their exp ectations of GMES in the marine domain have a good chance o f b eing ful filled and that their c ontinued s uppor t is warranted.

Purpose, scope & functionality of the MCS The I mpl ementation Gro up in r epr es enting the requir ements o f user s has confir med that the pur pose of the Mar ine C ore Serv ice is to make availab le & del iv er a set of basic, generic serv ices bas ed upo n co mmon - d enominato r ocean s tate v ariabl es that are r eq uired to hel p meet the need s for info rmation o f thos e res pons ibl e fo r env iro nmental and civ il s ecur ity pol icy making, ass essment and impl ementation. The r el ev ant pol icy driv ers hav e b een identified as the Regio nal Conv entions , the 6th Env ironmental Ac tion Pl an (in p articul ar its Cl imate Change and Marine E nv iro nmental Strategy co mponents ), the Sus tainabl e Dev elop ment imp erativ e no w b eing d ev elop ed thro ugh the Green Pap er on M aritime Polic y, rel ev ant existing EU Directiv es, and ongoing conc erns ov er civil security. All of these requir e l ong running data sets to define the mean, fl uctuations, and past trends in the state o f the marine env iro nment to rec ord its ev ol ution and the success o r otherwise of pol icy respons es and , with pr edictions o f future change , to establ ish basel ines for effectiv e env iro nmental management. Data reanal ys es, obtained through assimil ation by state o f the art mod els, will be par ticul arl y hel pful in an er a of cl imate change. Such informatio n wil l als o pr ov ide des ign criteria for s tructures and op eratio ns in the marine env iro nment that are fit for pur pose. In additio n s hor t range pred ictio ns (out to s ev eral day s ahead in general and with a few hours l ead time with greater acc uracy) are required p articul arly o f hazar dous co nditio ns, but als o for the efficient c onduc t of every day operations . The information services req uired to ful fil thes e purp ose s need to hav e gl ob al and p an-Eur opean sc ope. T he v ariabl es abo ut which infor mation is pr ov ided will b e do main -sp ecific; i.e. l ikely to v ary between the r egional s eas and gl obal oc eans & between high and mid l atitudes. T hey ar e des cr ibed in app endix 2.

GMES Fast Track Marine Core Service Strategic Implementation Plan EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The MC S is co nceiv ed as o ne p art of a pr oc ess ing chain which op erates on o bservational and other fo rms o f d ata to hel p cr eate tailored information s erv ices to meet a wide range o f end user needs. Almo st all suc h end us er s erv ices rel ating to the marine env ironment r eq uire acc ess to infor mation abo ut the s tate and dynamic s of the o ceans and s eas . The MCS provid es that infor mation to intermediate us ers who comb ine it with other fo rms of infor mation and data (e. g. so cio - eco nomic d ata) to p rovid e custo mised do wnstr eam services for the end users . The impl ementation of the overal l chain need s to hav e some fl exibil ity; as c ompo nents o f do wnstream s erv ices are d ev eloped to s erv e mul tipl e uses, it may be mor e efficient fo r them to be p rov ided as p art o f the MCS.

The p roc essing chain within the MCS mus t: Acq uire data fr om the ground segment o f the sp ace bas ed obs erv ing sy stems and in s itu networks . Acq uire atmosp heric fo rcing d ata (atmosp heric winds , temp eratur es , fl uxes) fro m National M eteorologic al Serv ices and EC MWF Ass embl e thes e into qual ity controll ed thematic datasets (i.e. spec ific data typ es such as sea sur face temp erature, salinity p rofil es… ) suitabl e for the gener ation of more extens iv e data s ets for sub sequent us e, anal ytical pr oduc ts and assimilatio n by oc ean models. Muc h of this has to b e car ried out in near real time Run numeric al oc ean mod els in near real time to ass imilate the thematic data and generate analy ses and forecas ts fro m them to an agreed and general ly p erp etuall y rep eating cycle, which us es info rmation fro m earl ier fo recas t cycles as well as the mos t rec ent thematic d ata. T he centres al so need to oper ate offl ine to pr oduc e reanal ys es / hindc asts.


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Pr epare p roducts s uitabl e for external servic e prov ision at the ‘I nterface’ s hown abov e. That interface mus t hav e a d isc ov ery and viewing c apab il ities and the ab il ity to do wnload sp ecific prod ucts in res pons e to req ues ts. It mus t als o b e abl e to d el iv er, prob ab ly q uite l arge vol umes o f data, routinel y to an agreed sc hedul e to meet the need s o f s pecific intermediate us ers .

O bservational components of the MCS The main req uirements of the space- ba sed obs ervati on infra struc ture are:

C ontinuity o f tried and tested observational method s is cruc ial. This is particul arl y cr itical around 2010 when data gap s c oul d o ccur fo r s ev eral of the mos t critical ob serv ations. It is mor e cr itical to es tabl is h s atell ite series for s us tainabl e s erv ice av ail abil ity than to try o ptimizing the s pecific ations and des igning for any one satellite and its instruments , if the latter l eads to exp ens iv e, non r enewabl e s atell ites. Es tabl is hing s atell ite ser ies sho uld l ead to signific antly lower produc tion cos ts. The Jaso n s eries (high accuracy altimet er sys tem fo r climate appl icatio ns and as a refer ence for o ther miss ions ) is an essential and critical component o f the GME S s atell ite pr ogr amme for MC S. P lanning of Jaso n - 3 mus t be a prio rity for GMES. The MC S req uires a high resolutio n al timeter s ys tem with at leas t three al timeters in add ition to the Jas on s eries . Sentinel- 3 s houl d incl ud e a co ns tell ation o f two s atell ites, fl ying simul taneously , p rov iding adequate c ov erage and oper ational robus tness. Ins trumentation costs for S3 shoul d be reduc ed as much as poss ibl e to all ow for a two- satell ite sy stem. C omp ared to the pr es ent des ign o f S3 ins trumentation, the pr iority for Sea Surfac e Temp erature is for high acc uracy dual v iew measurements. T he l arge swath r equir ement has a much lo wer pr iority, in p articul ar (b ut no t onl y), if S3 is a two satell ite system. For Oc ean C ol our a s ensor hav ing a s imil ar spec tral resol ution to MER IS is ess ential to meet the impo rtant s hel f and co astal ocean water q uality measurement r equir ements. SAR d ata (Sentinel 1) are r equired for oil sp il l detection and sea ic e monitor ing. This is cl early a Eur opean core s erv ice that sho uld be c onsid ered as part o f the MCS. The req uirement is for at l east o ne and pr eferably two SAR missio ns in additio n to the other non- Europ ean miss ions (e. g. RADAR SAT). Acces s to other E urop ean and non-Eur opean (e.g. NPOESS) satell ite data in real time is fundamental fo r the MC S. GME S s hould all ow for res earc h and technol ogical dev el opments . I n p articul ar, the p ossib il ity o f emb arking new ins truments with the p otential to meet GME S needs s hould b e co ns id ered . Wid e Swath altimetry and geostationary ocean col our are the two mos t impo rtant new technolo gy d ev elop ments that will b enefit the GME S MC S in the l ong run. Detail ed gro und segment req uirements and offerings b y E SA and EUM ETSAT remain to b e agreed . But the main rec ommend ation is l ikely to be that the GME S ground segment s hould dev elop rob us t interfac es with E UMET SAT Oc ean & Sea Ice SAF and with the MCS s atell ite data ass embl y c entres – see b elow .

T he main requir ements of the in situ obs erva tion infr astruc tur e are:Again the fo cus mus t be on obs erv ing method s and technolo gies that hav e b een s uffic ientl y tried and tested in res earch and op erational serv ices. Candid ate observ ing systems co mprise:


Drifting Argo Floats for the meas urement of temperature and s al inity pro files to ~2000m and, by trac king them, mean s ubs urfac e c urrents. Res earch vessels whic h del iv er complete s uites of mul tidiscipl inary parameters from the s urfac e to the oc ean fl oor . Suc h v es sel s sho uld be enc our aged to collect and r epor t ro utine sur face observatio ns whenev er they are und erway . X BTs l aunched by resear ch vessels and ships of opp ortunity under way fo r the measurement o f temp erature and sal inity pr ofil es to ~450 - 750m depth. Surfac e Moo rings capabl e of meas uring s ubs urface temper ature p rofiles in par ticul ar co ntinuously ov er long p eriods of time. C urrents are often monito red and meteor ol ogical measur ements ar e us ual ly made too . Bio foul ing res tricts the range of meas urements that can b e mad e fr om lo ng deployments in the pho tic zo ne but sur face sal inity and b iogeochemical meas urements are feasible. Ferry - Bo x and other r egional s hip of o ppo rtunity measur ement programmes for s urfac e trans ects which may includ e temperature, s al inity, tur bid ity, chl orop hyll , nutrient, oxy gen, pH and al gal typ es. The Continuous Pl ankton Rec ord er (CPR ) oper ated by the Sir Alister Hardy Found ation for Ocean Sc ience whic h is towed fro m merc hant ships on their no rmal s ail ings in or der to monito r the near-surface pl ankton of the No rth Atlantic and North Sea on a mo nthl y bas is. The network o f tid e gauges which p rov ides l ong term r eferenc e and v al idatio n sea level data.

Pr ior ities fo r impl ementing these techno logies in a co ordinated manner to prov id e continuity and exp and their utilisatio n, par ticul arl y to achiev e near r eal time data c oll ection, are pr oposed and the need fo r gl obal and r egional d ata ass emb ly centres is dis cuss ed.

Implementat ion plan

Ma in gu idel inesThe IG has adopted a number of p rinciples :

GME S is a jo int initiative of the EC , E SA & Memb er States s o it is ass umed that al l hav e a v ested interest in its suc cess, ju dg ed by th e valu e of the in for mation ser vices th at it delivers, and will b e will ing to co mmit co mmensurate res ources and adapt wo rking pr actices to achieve that suc cess . To b e jud ged s ucc essful in these ter ms , the MCS must b e genuinely driv en to s upp ort intermediate us ers on behalf of their end us ers, all of whom will app reciate the v alue o f its s erv ices and b e abl e to d etermine its out p ut & infl uence its ev ol ution. The MC S mus t be des igned and impl emented to meet identified needs in a r el iabl e, easy to use manner , hav ing guaranteed 24- ho ur/7- day- a-week avail abil ity, and p rov id ing info rmatio n of us eful p recis ion and stab ility. There is cons id erable s cope for integratio n and coo rd ination o f exis ting effo rts . The MCS must:

make maximum us e o f pas t investment and existing fac ilities ; be sustainabl e on an oper ational bas is, with approp riate governanc e and funding b uil t into the s ys tem.


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Proposed strategy and appl ic ationIn keep ing with the imperativ e to ens ure that the need s of end users are und ers tood and acted up on, and to make maximum use o f p ast inv es tment and exis ting facil ities these hav e b een rev iewed to es tabl ish sound foundatio ns upo n which to b uil d the MC S. The id entified needs are s ummarised in sec tion 2.1 and append ix 2. The MC S fo undatio ns can b e charac terised as:

the existing infr astruc ture in the for m of in s itu obs erv ing sys tems, E O systems and data co ll ectio n and modelling systems that are in place to p rov id e env iro nmental informatio n serv ices; thos e infor mation servic es thems elves, and p rev ious and cur rent R&D p rojects that hav e o r are d el iv ering r el ev ant und ers tanding, to ol s and cap abil ities.

The chosen s trategy is to b uil d on thes e found ations by making maximum us e of exis ting s ys tems and pas t inv estment in kno wl edge and tools. T he exis ting systems are d istr ibuted so the des ign of the MCS mus t b e d is trib uted. I n effect a sys tem of l argel y existing sys tems and thos e und er dev elo pment is the go al . The s trategy is then impl emented by anal ys ing the req uired functio nal ity of the co mp onent s ys tems to es tabl is h whether and if so wher e they exis t alread y or might eas ily b e up grad ed to meet req uirements. The repo rts of the WGs o n the sp ace b ased and in situ infras tructures ar e us ed for this, together with other knowl ed ge and ins ights obtained fro m publ ished l iterature, the member s of the I G and their contacts. Remaining gap s are identified , at l east in functio nal terms and with some c and id ates to fill them. Sustainab il ity d emand s that unnecess ary d upl icatio n is not c arried into the impl ementation of the MC S. Where poss ibl e a ro ad map for the pro cess has b een s uggested and p rior ities establ ished and rec ommendatio ns made.

Arc hitectur e imp lementation The key s tep is to reco gnis e that mod ell ing of the marine env iro nment can and need s to b e carr ied out at d ifferent sc ales in different domains and that biologic al and chemical pr oc ess es take pl ace within the context o f the pr ev ail ing phys ical env ironment. This recognitio n l ead s to the adop tion of two catego ries of nes ting of models ; (i) p hys ical ly fro m the gl ob al, to the regio nal , to the natio nal , to the loc al and ( ii) nesting o f ec os ys tem proc ess mod elling within an app ropriate phys ical model . For (i) , the actual choic e of domains is d etermined by the co mb ination o f p hys ical geo grap hy and user need. Thus :

The Med iterranean, Bal tic and Bl ack Seas hav e their o wn par ticul ar p hys ical and eco sys tem characteris tics l argel y defined b y their b athyme try, fluv ial inp uts and limited b ut impo rtant exchanges with their adjo ining s eas . The Arc tic Ocean is pr edic ted to b e the l ocation of the mos t r apid and dramatic cl imate changes d uring the 21st c entury, with the potential of major ramific ations for mid - l atitude c l imate. It also pl ays a major rol e in the fres hwater b al ance o f the Nor th Atlantic and is a v ery hos til e env ironment. The North Wes t shel f is one o f the mos t complex in the wor ld in terms of the intensity of marine exp loitation, mul tipl icity of industries, s erv ices and so cial amenities, complexity and detail of regul ation, adj oining pop ul ation density and indus trial d ev elopment. It is als o subject to input fro m l arge Eur opean riv ers , agricul tural run o ff and sensitiv ity to cl imate change. The North Atlantic pl ays a major rol e in the gl obal c irc ul ation and has s ignificant effects on Europ ean weather and cl imate. It p rov id es the b ound ary


cond itions d irec tly for the North Wes t s hel f and interacts str ongly with the Arctic Oc ean. Seas onal and cl imate pr ed ictio n are imp oss ibl e without kno wled ge of the three dimens ional state and dy namics of the glob al o cean. E urope has gl obal interes ts r equir ing acc ess to gl ob al information.

I t is env isaged that the MC S wil l co mpris e at l east o ne o perational mod ell ing and d ata ass imilatio n activ ity for each o f thes e domains, with an exchange o f boundary cond itions as necess ary: e.g. between the glob al and oc ean bas ins and their s hel f s eas , and between the encl osed regional seas and their adjoining ocean or s hel f s ea. T he res ol ution of the models is not pr escribed but sho uld aim to b e start-o f- the art for p rov isio n of the commo n deno minator data that are req uired from the MC S. The MERSE A IP C onso rtium has adop ted a func tional architec ture for a demo nstr ation of its per cep tion o f the MC S based on three Th ematic Ass emb ly Centres (TAC) and fiv e Monito ring and Fore casting Centres (M FC ), which it jointly d esc ribes as Th ematic Po rtals (TEPs) . The five MFC cov er the main o cean d omains : Glob al , Arctic, Nor th West Shelv es and NE Atl antic, Bal tic, and Med iterranean (the, Black sea remains to be integrated) . Jo intl y the TEPs compr ise a proc essing chain which c arries out the func tions l isted in section 2 above through a coll ectio n of serv ices dis tributed among providers’ phys ical systems. Resp onsib il ity for the necessary serv ices r esides with the app ropriate TEP . Whil st car e wil l be needed to ensur e robus tness a nd a void singl e points of fa il ure, im pl ementati on based on the MERS EA d esign, usi ng the c apabi lities, tool s, techniques, pr oc edures a nd sta nda rds d evel oped, adopted a nd being tested by the c onsorti um , i s a n a ttracti ve way a head a nd the IG rec ommends their a dopti on for the MCS . A key fea ture of the desi gn is its c ommi tm ent to i nteroper ability a nd dis tributed func tionali ty . This should a llow p otential c ontributor s to the MCS, who are not mem ber s of the IP, to a ugm ent i ts c a pa biliti es by contri buti ng needed ser vic es, provid ed tha t they opera te a ccordi ng to the rul es whic h ensure tha t interoperabili ty and ease of us e by interm edia te users.A number o f cand id ate prov ider s of the TACs required fo r p roc essing spac e bas ed and in situ obs erv ations are id entified , as are centres operating o cean models which sho uld be able to carry out the r equir ed data ass imilatio n and modell ing functio ns b y 2 008. It is fur ther co ncl uded that there shoul d b e one serv ice del iv ery centre for each of the glob al and regio nal s ea do mains id entified abov e prov iding info rmation d is covery, v iewing and do wnload /del iv ery functions bas ed on op en standar ds. These sho uld p rovid e access to the req uired and av ail abl e MC S pr oduc ts and defined sup por t serv ices .

DemonstrationThe s uitabil ity o f the s trategy is tes ted in s ectio n 6 thro ugh a s mal l numb er of end - to-end cas e stud ies of its env isaged appl ication. These are based o n:

Supp or t fo r existing env ironmental pr otec tion Conv entions and the (assumed ) impl ementation of the M arine Env ironmental Strategy Dir ectiv e. The p rov isio n of ice ser v ices . Supp ort for oil sp ill detection and management.

In eac h cas e the req uired data, the c ontributio n of the MCS and of intermed iate user s p rov iding req uired do wn stream serv ices are rev iewed.


9


MCS gover nance and related issues It is env isaged that the MC S wil l be distr ibuted and co mpr ise a number (of ord er 10 as discus sed in section 2.3) o f op erator s that will pr oduc e and offer pr oduc ts and serv ices, as charac terized in ap pend ix 2 and s ectio n 4, to intermediate us ers . So me s uch op erator s are l ikel y to b e co nsor tia. Other oper ators will be respo nsible fo r the T hematic Assembly Centres . O ther actors will exis t in the fo rm of external data prov iders, such as ESA and E UMETSAT for E arth Obs erv ations and agenc ies in Member States for in s itu data, acting s ingly or as the co ns or tia which c omprise the Oper ational Ocean Systems/Networ ks of Eur oGOOS. Altho ugh o ther op tions exist, i n o rd er to prov id e the necess ary d egree o f integratio n and co ordination of policies and d ecis ions mad e in common b y the MCS oper ators , it is sugges ted that a MCS Ma na gement Orga nisation (MCS MO) be fo rmed. This wo ul d need to hav e a l egal p ersonal ity. Loo king inwards, it wo ul d b e res ponsibl e for ens uring that the op erator s as outl ine d abov e d el iv ered their o ffered servic es acc ord ing to agr eed Serv ice Lev el Agreements (SLAs). The external data prov iders wo ul d probabl y hav e SLAs with the GME S M anagement Author ity, but the al ternative o f making them with the MC SM O is for c ons id eratio n. Lo oking outward s, s uch an Authority would repr esent the MC S in its interac tion with the GME S Management Author ity with res pec t to the ‘Gener al Management’ Function des cr ib ed in GAC (2006)6. An MC SMO woul d b e b etter abl e to exercis e the Tec hnical Management functio n d es cr ib ed in that doc ument than would a GME S- wide Author ity, s imp ly b ecaus e the us er d emand , tec hnical s ol utions , actual per for mance, research needs and qual ification proc esses are l ikely to be sp ecific to the marine do main at l east. In the v ery shor t term, i.e. in r espo nding to opportunities to demons trate and dev el op the MC S within FP7, s uch a Management Or ganisatio n might be cr eated and op erated by a l ead partner and co mpr ise an exec utive compo sed of r epres entatives o f a c onso rtium of operators. Howev er, in the l onger ter m, there wo ul d b e some merit in cr eating a s ep arate entity with its o wn l egal identity. T he Eur opean Eco nomic Inte res t Gr oup (E EI G) has so me charac teristics which woul d make it an attractive co mpany struc ture. Day to d ay interactio ns b etween pr oduc t and s erv ice provid ers and their us ers s hould b e co nduc ted direc tly. Propos al s for catal oguing and sear ching for d ata, p rod ucts and s erv ices are made in this Strategic Impl ementation Pl an. Ho wev er there will be a need for intermed iate us ers to interact with the op erator s and MC SMO to determine, on a lo ng term basis , the scop e and charac teristics of serv ices to b e o ffered, a ny changes to them and agree prior ities and an ass ociated R&D pro gramme. Some form of MCS Com miss ioni ng Forum , meeting at l eas t annuall y, co ul d provid e a suitabl e body fo r this.

Selection of op erator sThe s erv ices will b e p rovid ed by operato rs (i. e. ins ti tutes, agencies , c ompanies , or consor tia) that manage and o per ate functio nal centres. They sho ul d b e sel ected on the b asis of their abil ity to ful fil the requir ements o f a l egall y b inding co ntract, their acc es s to the req uired res ources, their exp ertis e (scientific and technical ), their oper ational status , track record and pr ev ious p erfo rmanc e, commitment to wo rk with the interfaces , and cos t- effec tiv eness. R egional knowl edge and ownership wil l cl earl y be impor tant, as well as so und rep artition of the wor k b etween Member States The co mpositio n o f the MC S s houl d b e rev iewed period ical ly to all ow fo r mod ifications of the p artners hip. Sev eral el ements could b e co ns id ered in s uch rev iews , e. g. the (d ul y weighted) national r esour ces committed to the sy stem, the r elativ e perfo rmance and strengths of potential op erators, national pol icies , needs for new s erv ices , and their abil ity to provid e ful ly operational and sus tainable serv ices .


A l ev el o f c ompetitio n in some aspec ts o f the pr oces s chain wil l be app rop riate to create incentiv es to innov ate and improv e p erfor mance. For this pur pos e there wil l be a need to enco urage a meas ure o f functio nal d upl icatio n. Howev er, this will need to b e b al anced agains t the imper ative to cr eate cr itical mass in a r el ativel y few centre s and the d ifficul ty of dupl icating major investments.

Fu nding & Data PolicyAt pr esent there are no rel iabl e es timates of the ful l cos ts of a n effec tiv e, efficient MCS or of the ups tream and d ownstr eam capab ilities that are req uired to del iv er v alue from it. Suc h estimates are r equir ed during the next y ear o r s o as exp erience gr ows d uring the FP 7 funded d emons tration p hase; no t l eas t to ens ure that the cas e for long term fund ing is rob us t. In the in terim, it is assumed that, becau se the servic es being delivered by the MCS ar e p ubl ic goods they w ill be c o- fu nded by th e EU and Member States, not at the po int of del iv ery by charges lev ied on intermediate us ers. On this basis, it is fur ther assumed that upstream data and MCS data, pr oduc ts and servic es made available to inter mediate user s w il l be free of charg e, excep t for the cost of deliver y, if th ey are used excl usively for GMES p urp oses. It is exp ected that intermed iate us ers wil l b e financed thro ugh us er c harges in effect fo r the v al ue that they ad d to the info rmation and serv ices that they obtain fr om the MC S and o ther ups tream s erv ice p rov ider s. Some anc ill ary data may fall within the sc ope of the I NSPIRE Directiv e o thers will b e av ail abl e on terms specified by their s up pl iers . Ther e is no doub t that some EU l ev el supp ort wil l be d es irable for intermed iate s erv ice p rov id ers dur ing the MCS demons tration phas e at l east. It is und ers tood that this is pl anned within FP7. At pr esent such suppor t is being provid ed by the E SA GSE s, in particul ar M arC oast and P ol ar View. In future the d ata purc hase activ ities of EMSA and the ESA managed - EC funded data- b uy pl anned within FP 7 will b e imp or tant in this regard , if they are s us tained .

Conclusion The Mar ine C or e Serv ice was cho sen as a GME S Fast T rack initiativ e b ecaus e a clear need was identified fo r its output and the necess ary foundations fo r its cr eation and s ucc ess ful demo nstration b y 2008, and succ ess ful oper ational impl ementation thereafter, were in pl ace. That remains the case. The task no w is to build on thos e found ations by mob il is ing the undoub ted intell ectual and material res ourc es that exis t within European organisatio ns s uch as ESA and E UM ETSAT and within agencies , ins titutes and indus try within E U M emb er States and foc us them on ac tiv ities throughout the p roc ess ing chain that:

Are well res earched (and tested where possible) and therefor e known to be scientifical ly and technically rob us t, and state of the art. Will del iver what is requir ed by intermed iate and end us ers in or der to ens ure that pol ices des igned to del iv er env iro nmental pr otection and sustainabl e dev el opment are dev el op ed, tes ted and impl emented.

T he cr itical success factors are jud ged to be:Impl ementation of the p rior ities/actions reques ted in this Pl an to s ecure space bas ed and


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in situ obs erv ing cap abil ities, noting in p artic ul ar the need fo r co ntinuity of data supply; Succ essful mob ilisatio n of the resour ces need ed to impl ement the MC S, in a fair, trans par ent, effic ient and effec tiv e manner. That inv olv es b uilding on p ast inv es tmen t, which has inevitabl y c reated stro ng centres with cap abil ities in spec ific ar eas, whil st keeping op en the door to innov ation and v aluabl e c ontrib utions fro m elsewhere – no ‘cl osed shop’ ; Av oid ing unnecessar y dupl icatio n that does not add to robus tness an d can be wasteful of res ources ; Achieving interoperab il ity thro ughout what is l ikely to b e a co mpl ex pr oces sing chain and thereby making serv ices read il y acc ess ibl e to intermed iate users, o nl y so me of whom are identifiabl e today; Add ing need ed improv ements to exis ting s erv ices; Ado ptio n o f the reques ted data polic y.

The strategy of build ing upo n the cap abil ities being d evel oped in the s ucc ess ful Integrated Pr oject (MER SE A), rel ev ant ESA GSEs (M arCoas t and P ol ar View) and pas t national R&D and Framework P rogrammes is d es igned to ens ure s tate o f the ar t. T he us e of s erv ice del iv ery port als focussed on the global and sp ecific regional s eas s houl d it make it eas y for us ers to l oc ate d ata & produc ts to meet their r eq uirements. By making thes e p ortal s av ail abl e to all p otential s up pl iers will ing and able to p rov id e effectiv e s erv ices , us ers wil l hav e choic e and no s uch s up pl ier will be at a d is adv antage. T he ins istence up on the us e o f op en s tandard s s houl d ensur e interoper abil ity. The substantial fund ing by the EU and E SA M ember States o f the firs t Sentinel 3 and 1 is vital of co urs e, but continuity b eyo nd this firs t segment of the miss ion and o f the Jas on series is not yet sec ure. The funding o f a pr e op erational MCS demons tration pr oj ect, designed on the principles set o ut abov e, within the FP7 Sp ace Programme will fac il itate impl ementation of the str ategy. The alloc ation of FP7 funds to the pur chas e o f space d ata is wel co me. T he co mmitment of a rel atively s mal l amount o f money for co ord ination o f and inv es tment in sel ected in s itu networ ks s ho uld help to maximis e the v al ue o f M emb er States ’ current inv es tment in suc h d ata sources , and co ul d hav e a d is propo rtio nate imp act b ecause suc h coo rd ination is ad hoc at pres ent.

2 Introductio nThe fo rmativ e Worksho p1 which l ed to the acc ep tance o f the Mar ine Core Serv ice (MCS) as a GME S Fast T rack was held in Bruss el s on Octob er 27 - 28 2005. Ther e it was agr eed that the MC S:

2.1 will prov ide the co mmon deno minator d ata for all users in the marine sec torGMES

The marine core service is part of the Global Monitoring for Environment and Security initiative (GMES). The purpose of GMES, as defined in 20082 , is to deliver services of public interest. A communication in 20093 confirmed that these services should be in the environment and security domain. It consists of three components, space, in-situ and services. The space and in-situ components provide measurements of the planet. Planning for the space component was set out in 20094 . The services, according to the 2008 definition, are

the basis for Europe's autonomy in information provision world-wide. The scope and delivery schemes of GMES services should be designed to ensure an operational implementation based on user requirements and applicable legislation, but might have to be prioritised according to institutional and policy needs.

2.2 Core ServicesSince 2008, four pre-operational GMES services have been launched. These are:

a land monitoring service; a marine service; an atmospheric composition monitoring service; an emergency response service.

Each of these "core" services should deliver a number of products that can either be observations derived directly from the space or in-situ components or parameters derived from models that assimilate these observations. It is assumed that these services will be at least partly publicly funded and subject to some decision-making at an EU level.

1GAC(2005)12 - Workshop on GMES Marine Core Service, Brussels – October 27-28, 2005: a report by P. Ryder, J.-F. Minster, N. Pinardi, K. Resfnes, M. Bell and J. Johannessen2 Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, the Council, the

European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES): we care for a safer planet Brussels, 12.11.2008 COM(2008) 748 final

3 Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, the Council, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES): Challenges and Next Steps for the Space Component Brussels, 28.10.2009 COM(2009) 589 final

4 Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, the Council, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES): Challenges and Next Steps for the Space Component Brussels, 28.10.2009 COM(2009) 589 final

GM ES Fast Tr ac k Marine C ore Se rv ice Str ate gi c Impleme n tation Plan EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

2.3 Downstream SectorOther services, "the downstream sector", can use the products from the "core" service to create other products but these are market-driven. Should they be required for any particular service on behalf of public authorities – at a local, national or EU level – then they will be paid from the appropriate budget subject to normal cost-benefit analyses and public procurement rules. They are not subject to the centralised planning of the "core" services. However the satisfaction of those providing services in the downstream sector will be the principal factor in judging the success of the core services. Up to now it has not been entirely clear if the downstream sector refers to all services using earth observation imagery for furthering environment and security policy or only those that use products generated by a core service. This will become more confusing as data from the Sentinel satellites become available. These satellites may provide observations paid from a GMES budget that are useful for services in the marine or maritime domain that do not actually use any products generated by the marine core services. However the purpose of this document is to define the marine core service, not the whole of GMES. For clarity, only services that use products generated by the marine core service will be designated as downstream service.

2.4 Marine Core ServiceA Worksho p5 which l ed to the proposal o f the Mar ine Core Serv ice (MCS) as a GME S Fast T rack was held in Bruss el s on Octob er 27 - 28 2005. Those present agr eed that the MC S:

a. will prov ide the co mmon deno minator d ata for all users in the marine sec tor, in other words the information (sometimes mandatory) for existing & new downstream services;

b. should deliver regular and systematic reference information (processed data, elaborated products) on the state of the oceans and regional seas:

i. at the resolution required by intermediate users & downstream service providers, of known quality and accuracy,

ii. for the global and European regional seas, with downscaling capacity based on specific needs.

c. products should comprise:i. observational and model data,ii. real time data and predictions (from days to weeks) and re-analysis

(longest time series of information about the ocean state in the past),iii. simulations (what-if scenarios).

In order to deliver its products, the MCS should contribute to:d. Organisation of sustainable development and operations (interoperable

&coherent) of:i. the observing systemsii. the modelling & forecasting facilities

5 GAC(2005)12 - Workshop on GMES Marine Core Service, Brussels – October 27-28, 2005: a report by P. Ryder, J.-F. Minster, N. Pinardi, K. Resfnes, M. Bell and J. Johannessen

Author, 01/03/-1,

Ca we change this? It is not clear what "common denominator data" means.


3

GM ES Fast Tr ac k Marine C ore Se rv ice Str ate gi c Impleme n tation Plan Page 3

iii. the data harmonization and information for the global & regional scales, Strengthening of the connection with downstream services (e.g. marine safety,

e. oil spill monitoring, harmful algae bloom monitoring, coastal management, marine resources…),

f. Integration & upgrading of the capabilities of existing national services.It was further agreed that there is a need to show that several components of the MCS are already working in Europe and to convey this message to the decision makers. In addition, it was noted that the MCS provides an effective means to utilize the significant investment of the GMES space component. In this context there was a complete understanding that the ESA-GMES Space programme is fundamental to the success of the MCS.The It was agreed that the MCS was enjoined to concentrate on the global to the regional European scales (as opposed to the "non-European regional" or "European coastal"), so that the European concerted effort will be justified. MCS should then be configured as an initial European contribution to the marine segment for GEOSS.Small Implementation Groups were set upappointed after the 2005 user workshops for each of the three GMES Fast Track Services. They largely consisted of Commission services, EU agencies, the European Space Agency, EUMETSAT, regional sea conventions and some other bodies that might provide services or products upstream or downstream of the core services. They were given the mandate of supervising and validating the implementation of these Services, in open cooperation with the relevant user communities.The Terms of Reference, composition and working methods of the Marine Core Service Implementation Group (IG) are reproduced at Appendix 1.The main output of the IG to date is this Strategic Implementation Plan and the supporting documents generated by working groups set up by the IG, subsequently approved, and either incorporated into or attached as appendices to the Plan. This plan has beenwas updated in 2010 as guidance for the 2012-2014 gap filling activities to move from R&D to real operational services.If endorsed by the GMES Bureau and GMES Advisory Council, the Plan will provide ratified guidelines and prioritisation for implementation. In the short term it is envisaged that it will guide current R&D and demonstration activities being pursued with EC and ESA funding, in particular those that will be funded within the Space Theme of FP7. However, it is hoped that the Plan will also provide a roadmap for a long-term, sustainable Marine Core Service able to support a wide range of downstream services, some of which can be seen today but many of which will only emerge when the MCS is in place. With this in mind, an effort has been made to describe the rationale for the guidelines and priorities, not simply the proposals themselves. It is hoped that the Strategic Implementation Plan will give confidence to the EC and Member States that their expectations of GMES in the marine domain have a good chance of being fulfilled and that their continued support is warranted.To fulfil its mandate and build upon the conclusions of the Workshop the IG has addressed a number of specific issues:

a. The purpose, scope and functionality of the Marine Core Service, especially of its global and regional components


b. The space infrastructure required by the Marine Core Service, including the requirement for and continuity of current European capacities (space and ground segments) operated by EUMETSAT, ESA and national agencies, and the possibilities for international cooperation (complementary or shared capacities)

c. In situ infrastructure for the Marine Core Service, especially the requirement for and sustainability of European capacities and their contribution to international systems as well as the European coordination to manage these capacities

d. Structure and governance of the Marine Core Service, including, for example, the sharing of activities and operational responsibilities between the service provision partners and the associated service level agreement process, defined between the GMES Management Authority, representing the MCS user communities, and, for example, a MCS Provider Consortium, including the impacts of this service level agreement on the consortium partner status and on service information policy,

e. Links and interfaces between the Marine Core Service and downstream services, including the requirements of downstream services for MCS products, their dependencies in terms of product delivery (timeliness, quality control, …) and the associated contractual issues.

These are now reviewed before the implementation roadmap is developed and described.


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3 The purpose, scope and functionality of the MCSBased on the adopted Working Group reports, other papers and discussions at the meetings of the IG, the following clarification of this issue has been obtained:

3.1 PurposeThe policy drivers have been identified as:

a. Regional Conventions between Member States & the EC – OSPAR / HELCOM / Barcelona;

b. 6th Environmental Action Plan; in particular its Climate Change and Marine Environmental Strategy62 components;

c. The Sustainable Development imperative which is written into the Rome Treaty and is now being developed through the Green Paper on Maritime Policy73

d. Relevant existing EU Directives, such as the Marine Strategy Framework Directive and the Water Framework Directive in its application to coastal waters.

e. Specifically the Integrated Maritime Policy of the EU8 has defined many information needs, which the MCS is most suited to help to provide

f. EMODNET is a new initiative to gather and share better Marine Knowledge and the MCS has a specific role to provide parts of it.

g. The EU's new initiative on marine knowledgeError: Reference source notfound which proposes an overall architecture for marine data. The marine core service plays a principal role in this.

h. Concerns over civil security which manifest themselves in particular for safety of life and property in the marine environment, and the recognition that whilst there are risks to be managed through well designed warning systems, defences and other preventive measures, major natural hazards and man made accidents will occur that also need to be managed. The Prestige accident in 2003 and flooding in Holland and England in 1953 and in New Orleans in 2005 are examples.

i. There is also a growing requirement to prevent and police illegal activity, much of which centres on drug and human trafficking via the marine domain.

All of these require long running data sets to define the mean state9 of the marine environment, fluctuations about that, past trends and future predictions of change

6 See section 6.17 The Maritime Policy Green Paper has emphasised that commercial sectors such as

shipping, fishing, oil exploration, offshore construction, aquaculture, and tourism, and public sectors such as coastal protection, defence, search and rescue, R&D and government policy making all need dataon past, present and future meteorological, oceanographic, hydrographic and ecological state of the seas and the oceans. Global-scale monitoring is required to meet this need and the EU is being encouraged to set up a European Marine Observation & Data Network to provide sustainable, improving access to information.

8 An Integrated Maritime Policy for the European Union Brussels, 10.10.2007 COM(2007) 575 final

9 Here we mean the physical, biological and chemical state of the environment, in general. The need for the biological component is likely to be expressed in terms of the state of ecosystems, and habitats; the chemical component in terms of pollutants and nutrients


(particularly in eraareas of uncertainty about climate) to establish baselines for environmental management and design criteria for structures operating in the environment. In addition short range predictions (out to several days ahead in general and with a few hours lead time with greater accuracy) are required particularly of hazardous conditions, but also for the efficient conduct of every day operations.The MCS marine core service must be designed and implemented to meet these needs in a reliable, easy to use, operational5 manner, with information of useful precision and stability.The Lisbon agenda is also an important policy initiative for GMES as a whole, noting that the GMES was also intended to contribute to the Lisbon Agenda. The programme is was included in the Quick Start Programme and expected to foster the creation of new, innovative information based services and knowledge. As such it contributes to the goals of EU 2020 10

3.2 The nature of the MCSThe information services required to fulfil this purpose need to have global and pan- European scope. T heHowever the range and variability of these variables ab out whic h information is p rov id ed will be strongly domain- specific; i.e. likely to vary between the regional seas and global oceans & between high and mid latitudes.The MCS is conceived as one part of a processing chain which operates on observational and other forms of data to help create tailored information services to meet a wide range of end user needs. Almost all such end user services relating to the marine environment require access to information about the state and dynamics of the oceans and seas. The MCS provides that information to intermediate users who combine this with other forms of information and data to provide customised downstream services for end users. The concept is illustrated in figure 1 Figure 1and further elaborated in section 2. 53.7 below.

10 Europe 2020, A European Strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth, 03.03.2010 COM(2010) 2020


7


Figure 1service delivery chain Figure 1Figure 1 illustrates the position of the MCS in the overall chain of service delivery from GMES input data to the provision of multiple information services to end users.The implementation of the overall chain needs to have some flexibility. As components of downstream services are developed to serve multiple uses, it may be more efficient for them to be provided as part of the MCS.The envisaged MCS variables & products are described in Appendix 2. TheA sample of applications /areas of benefit that these are capable of serving are indicated in tabl e 1Table 1.

Are a of b en efi t Products T o in termed i ate u sers611

Final u ser

Climate research Com prehensiv e and i nf erred observ ati onal dat a set s reanal ysed i n st ate of t he art m odel s

Cl imate research centres

O cean and cl im at e research; v ali dati on of scenari os.Poli cy m aki ng on clim at e change

Mari ne Env i ronm ental Protection

st at e and im pact dat a &associ ated i ndicators

EEA, OSPAR, HELCOM, Barcel ona, Nati onal env i ronm ental agenci es;

DG ENV, Poli cy makers, general publi c

11 In practice, the actual intermediate users may be contactors appointed by the listed agencies or institutes


Ext ended range & sea son al weat her f orecasts

Ini ti al ocean conditi ons;reanal ysi s

ECMW F, Nati onal Meteorologi cal Serv i ces (NMS)

Agri cul ture, i nsurance, energy, t ransport; publi c saf et y preparedness; research

Mari ne saf ety Hi gh resol uti on i ce/ sea st ate & ocean current f orecasts

NMSs, Nati onal O ceanographic Agenci es, Nati onal Mari ne saf ety agenci es, m aritim e t ransport i ndust ry

Search and rescue, drift i ng obj ect m anagem ent; ex trem e wav e f orecast preparati on; m ari ne transport ati on

F i sheri es, ecosy stem s

Physi cal condi ti ons; reanal ysi s of past condi ti ons

Nati onal m ari ne and f i sheri es i nst itut es

I CES, DG FISH, Nati onal fi sheri es;research

Shi ppi ng & off shore i ndust ri es

Hi gh resol uti on i ce/ sea- st ate & current f orecast s f or operati ons: reanal yses f or desi gn

Val ue addi ng serv i ce com pani es

O perati on support , shi p rout i ng, st ruct ure desi gn cri t eri a, ri sk asse ssm ent; EMSA

Oil Spill m anagem ent-

T em perature, wi nd, wav e & current data

Respo nsi bl e Nati onal m ari ne agenci es & European Mari ne Saf ety Agency (EMSA)

Af f ect ed coast al publi c authoriti es &busi ne sses

Civ il Securi ty T em perature, wi nd, wav e & current data

Cust om s & Ex ci se, Coast G uards

DG T REN, Immi grati on and drug control agenci es, poli ce f orces

Mari ne Env i ronm ent, Ecosyst em s

Boundary and i niti al condi ti ons, data product s

Nati onal Coast al m oni t ori ng and f orecasti ng syst em

Nat i onal env i ronm ental or m ari ne agenci es; Nati onal W FD reporti ng; Coast al m anagem ent.

Table 1 Examples of areas of benefit, product lines, intermediate and final usersArea of benefit Products Requireme

nt for recent information12

To intermediate users13

Final user

Maritime safety High resolution ice/sea state & ocean current forecasts

Hours national meteorological services, national Oceanographic Agencies, National Marine safety agencies, maritime transport industry

Search and rescue, drifting object management; extreme wave forecast preparation; marine transportation

Shipping & offshore operations

High resolution ice/sea- state & current forecasts for operations: reanalyses for design

Hours Value adding service companies

Operation support, ship routing, structure design criteria, risk assessment; EMSA

12 timing indicates fastest speed that information is required. In most cases archived data is required as well in order to analyse past trends, predict future events and calibrate models.

13 In practice, the actual intermediate users may be contactors appointed by the listed agencies or institutes


9


Oil Spill management-

Temperature, wind, wave & current data

Hours Responsible National marine agencies & European Marine Safety Agency (EMSA)

Affected coastal public authorities & businesses

Coastal protection

Boundary and initial conditions, data products

Hours National Coastal monitoring and forecasting system

National environmental or marine agencies; National WFD reporting; Coastal management.

Civil Security14 Temperature, wind, wave & current data

Hours Customs & Excise, Coast Guards

Immigration and drug control agencies, police forces

Extended range & seasonal weather forecasts15

Initial ocean conditions; reanalysis

Days ECMWF, National Meteorological Services (NMS)

Agriculture, insurance, energy, transport; public safety preparedness; research

Marine Management

state data for production of indicators

Months EEA, OSPAR, HELCOM, Barcelona, National environmental agencies;

DG ENV, Policy makers, general public

fisheries management16

Physical conditions; reanalysis of past conditions

Year National marine and fisheries institutes

ICES, National fisheries agencies, research

Climate research Comprehensive and inferred observational data sets reanalysed in state of the art models

Year Climate research centres

Ocean and climate research; validation of scenarios. Policy making on climate change

Table 1: A generic summary of areas of benefit, product lines, intermediate and final users

3.3 Th e scope of th e MCS an d its rationale

3.4 At the pr es ent time it is entirel y feasible, with useful acc uracy , to d es cr ib e Th e requirements for delivering a marine core service

This section was a bit mixed-up. I have re-ordered it but I am not sure of its purpose. Some of it is repeated later in the text. The operational objective of the marine core service is to d es cr ib e

14 Most of these applications require vessel detection in synthetic aperture radar. Better knowledge of sea-state can improve confidence in results.

15 The marine core service is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for better seasonal weather forecasts. More research is needed to show whether these are viable.

16 There is a relationship between sea conditions and recruitment but it is not yet well known. It is expected that, as knowledge accumulates, better data on physical and chemical composition of the water might reduce uncertainties in fisheries management


a. properties of the upper layer of the ocean for those parameters that can be measured directly or indirectly through from satellite observation eg surface temperature, ice cover etc

b. the physical state and dynamics of the oceans and seas, incl uding the rel evant dy namics , from the surface to the sea floor, provid ed that rep res entative d ata are av ailabl e to (a) res olv e the main dy namical and p hysic al characteristic s suffic iently often to sp an the p erio d o f us eful p redic tabil ity o f cur rent numerical mod el s (a few weeks ) and (b) des cr ibe the forc ing from the atmosphere. I t is v al uabl e, and for some purpo ses and locations essential , to know the extent and nature o f ic e cov er and the fl ux of fr esh water from the majo r riv ers. The nature o f the b otto m top ogr ap hy is cl early important but that is s uffic ientl y wel l known , o n the br oad sc ale at least.

Some in situ meas urements are av ail abl e fro m researc h ves sels to character iz e the bio logic al and c hemical state o f the seas but these are often spars e in time and sp ace and tend to b e co ncentrated in coas tal waters. They are r arely av ail abl e in near real time17. They do allo w identific ation of long p eriod trend s at (hop eful ly) repr esentative l ocations . Some limited pr oper ties can b e infer red mor e freq uentl y and extens iv ely fro m EO data, e.g. p rimary p rod uctiv ity and s ed iment lev els from ocean colour meas urements . T he pr esence of so me poll utants, in par ticul ar o il spill s and excessiv e nutrients , leading to extensiv e al gal blooms at the oc ean sur face, can be inferred fro m EO data too . But there is no d oubt that add itional in situ data are need ed to d efine the biologic al and c hemical state more comp rehensiv el y. This requires computer models, computing facilities and observations.

3.4.1 Computer modelsTime -dependent circulation models of the oceans and seas are crucial for maximising the value of intermittent sparse data to deliver the best possible descriptions of their past, current and future state. Physical models are well developed and available with increasing resolution for the global oceans and regional seas. Methods for nesting limited area, higher resolution models within global and regional models are available too. Models of biological and chemical processes in the seas that are capable of providing useful analyses and predictions of at least the lower trophic levels of ecosystems remain in the research domain. Whether the resolution and accuracy of the output products are sufficient to meet the needs of users is not yet known. Better knowledge should emerge during the demonstration phase of the marine core service.

3.4.2 Computing facilitiesSubstantial powerful computing facilities, housed and operated to achieve 24- hour/7-day-a-week availability are essential to deliver truly operational services and such facilities are required to conduct development of ecosystem models for future operational use. These exist in the National Meteorological Services, National Oceanographic Agencies or major research facilities that have a mandate to provide operational services, b ut are few in number. Computing power is decreasing in cost.IS COMPUTING POWER A LIMITING FACTOR IN THE ALGORITHMS USED OR ARE WE LIMITED BY COARSENESS OF MEASUREMENTS?

17 Some moorings and the Ferry Box technology are capable of near real time biogeochemical reporting. New technologies such as gliders and ARGO floats can also collect biogeochemical data and are very promising for the provision of near real time data


11


3.4.3 Observations

3.4.3.1 Physical parameters Ocean circulation models require rep res entative d ata to describe: a. the main dy namical and p hysic al characteristic s frequently enough to sp an the

p erio d o f us eful p redic tabil ity o f cur rent numerical mod el s (a few weeks ) b. the forc ing from the atmosphere. c. (for some purposes and locations) the extent and nature o f ic e cov er and the

fl ux of fr esh water from the majo r riv ers. The nature o f the b otto m top ogr ap hy is cl early important but that is s uffic ientl y wel l known , for the global and regional scales considered within the scope of the marine core service.

3.4.3.2 Chemical and biological parameters Satellite observations generally have the spatial and temporal coverage required but, of course, only monitor the upper layers of the sea. Some limited pr oper ties, e.g. p rimary p rod uctiv ity and s ed iment lev els, can be inferred from ocean colour meas urements . T he pr esence of so me poll utants, in par ticul ar o il spill s and excessiv e nutrients , leading to extensiv e al gal blooms at the oc ean sur face, can be inferred fro m EO data too . But there is no d oubt that add itional in situ data are need ed to d efine the biologic al and c hemical state more comp rehensiv el y. Some in situ meas urements are av ail abl e fro m researc h ves sels to character iz e the bio logic al and c hemical state o f the seas but these are often spars e in time and sp ace and tend to b e co ncentrated in coas tal waters. They are r arely av ail abl e in near real time18 but they do allo w identific ation of long p eriod trend s at (hop eful ly) repr esentative l ocations .

3.4.3.3 Adequacy of monitoring network Initial experience from projects such as MERSEA and MyOcean indicates that the monitoring network does allow the preparation of products. It has not yet been established whether the accuracy or precision of these products would improve with a denser observation network. To some extent results from the ongoing MyOcean project should answer this question. Furthermore certain current projects under the European Marine Observation and Data Network19 are also aiming to assess the adequacy of the current monitoring network The marine knowledge communicationError: Referencesource not found indicates that the Commission will make an assessment in 2012-2013 as to the needs for further observations in the marine domain.

3.5 Geographical scope of marine core serviceWith these caveats, and the hope that continuity of EO data can be maintained and in situ monitoring improved, it is clear that an MCS that can fulfil its purpose, given the availability of the necessary computing, data collection and processing facilities and skilled staff to operate them.

18 Some moorings and the Ferry Box technology are capable of near real time biogeochemical reporting. New technologies such as gliders and ARGO floats can also collect biogeochemical data and are very promising for the provision of near real time data

19 Marine Knowledge 2020 – should be adopted as a Communication in June 2010


The descriptions above provide necessary but insufficient criteria to define the scope of a practical, deliverable MCS. It is also necessary to place some limits on the areal extent and resolution of common services to be provided as part of the MCS and those which will be more properly and efficiently provided as downstream services – see below. There are strong arguments – see section 4.3.1 5.3.1 "Architecture"- for recognizing the particular characteristics and needs for MCS marine core service products on a global scale, for the oceans which border Europe and their shelf and regional seas. But are the needs for descriptions of the physical, biological and chemical state of every estuary or coastal zone to be met by the MCS? Are high resolution models of every EEZ to be maintained and operated when needed to predict the evolution of major accidental releases of pollutants as part of the MCS? Surely not. T hes e are impo rtant spec ialised , nor mall y national , need sIt is currently not technically or financially feasible to provide this for the whole of the European shelf. In certain coastal areas, a local risk assessment will indicate that this is cost-effective. In others it will not.The decision as to whether to implement local solutions are national concerns which should be met by downstream services funded from local budgets , coordinated where necessary at a regional or EU level. Such services will be supported by the MC S marine core service through the provision of broader scale state descriptions,; in particular in the form the boundary and initial conditions for high resolution models of coastal or otherwise defined domains of interest.The r ational e for this co ncl usio n is bo th political and eco nomic. Firstl y,This respects the principle of s ubsid iairity notes that: s ubsid iarity that "nothing should be done by a larger and more complex organization which can be done as well by a smaller and simpler organization". The architecture that is proposed in section 4, a system of systems, from global to regional, follows that tenet. The coastal domain, where the greatest diversity of end users arises, is not considered part of the MCS, since it can be served most effectively at a national and local level by downstream services. If the MC S was to maintain the cap abil ity to provid e d iv ers e, high resol ution services ev ery where, for all possibl e purposes requiring infor mation abo ut the co mmon d enominator s tate v ariabl es , it woul d need to be a v ery l arge and compl ex o rganizatio n. Furthermor e, it wo ul d still b e necessary for the MC S to inter face with intermediate us ers to c ombine the s tate var iabl es with al l other loc al information, which is necessary to resolv e real s oc ial , economic and env iro nmental issues , so there would be few sav ings and the po tential for co mplex, unmanageabl e interfaces. This is not to deny that so me of the ‘front end ’ functions of the MC S – see section 2. 4 b el ow – co uld and sho ul d not be c arried out at r egional centers, p articul arl y where they can make us e of exis ting cap abil ities as d is cussed in s ectio n 4.2. Seco ndl y, the substantial investment that wil l be needed to p rov id e MC S ser v ices req uir es the number o f co mputer intensiv e mod eli ng/data as simil ation centers at l east to be kept to a minimum, co ns is tent with the recognized large s cal e v ariatio n in the gl ob al and regio nal European o ceans and seas and a des ire for some technic al c ompetitio n at the margin. The env isaged co nsol idatio n and integration to r el atively well eq uipp ed centres brings the po tential for improved v al ue for money and sc ientific qual ity, as well as ro bus tness to the sys tem. In the spir it of the Europ ean Resear ch Ar ea, the integra tion o f the MC S can play a signific ant role in dr awing the intell ectual resour ces and tapp ing the expertise of a wide community. The Works hop which l ed to the decis ion to Fast Tr ack MC S impl ementation, and much prior discuss ion, recognised this and conc l ud ed that the number of such centres should be of order 10. Provi ded that i nforma tion fr om the MCS is fr eel y a nd


13


readily a va il able for fur ther ela boration i n d ownstr eam s ervic es a nd there is a sharing of tools, that c oncl usi on is up held by the I G. Thisboundary condition provided by the marine core service will release public and private downstream service providers from the need to duplicate the services provided by the MCS and enable them to focus on the many localised, tailored services that are required by end users.The intention to provid e signific ant EU fund ing thro ugh the FP 7 Sp ace Pr ogr amme to sup por t the further dev el opment and demo nstr ation o f the MC S, whil st inv estment in do wnstream ser v ice provis ion is l ikel y to fall mainl y to Member States and co mmercial organiz ations, p rov ides a c ounterv ail ing pr ess ure to maximize the s ize and sc ope of the MC S. The IG bel iev es this press ure to be unfo rtunate becaus e it c ould del iv er an unsustainabl e outc ome in the long term unless managed car efully . I t woul d b e a huge mistake to s upport d ev elopment and demo nstr ation o f a mul tipl icity of p re- op erational sy stems ( potential ly with s ub -op timal p erfo rmance) thro ugh FP7 whic h could no t be sus tained. This again argues for an MC S which is as small as nec essar y to d el iv er its fundamental p urp os e at the E urop ean sc al e. T his is no t to d eny the need to buil d up exp ertis e in Memb er States to us e the MCS information fo r their sp ecific needs . The iss ue of funding is dis cuss ed further in sec tion 7. A marine core service with the same geographical scope as the MyOcean prototype is approximately the correct dimension. Any follow-ups should not aim to increase the coverage towards the coast but rather focus on measuring and improving the quality of the existing service.

3.6 Marine Core Service Functionality

Figure 2 essential functions of an MCSRecognizing that the MCS must collect, quality control and process data, using numerical models and standard analytical tools, to produce and deliver, hindcasts,


analyses and forecasts the required operational functions of an MCS are as illustrated in Figure 2.Briefly the functions are to:

a. Acquire data from the ground segment of the space based observing systems and in situ

b. networks. Typically these will be at level 1 or 2 (See Appendix 4).c. Acquire atmospheric forcing data (atmospheric winds, temperatures, fluxes)

from NMSs and ECMWFd. Assemble these into QC thematic datasets (i.e. specific data types such as

sea surface temperature, salinity profiles…) suitable for the generation of more extensive data sets for subsequent use, analytical products and assimilation by ocean models. Much of this has to be carried out in near real time

e. Run numerical ocean models in near real time to assimilate the thematic data and generate analyses and forecasts from them to an agreed and generally perpetually repeating cycle, which uses information from earlier forecast cycles as well as the most recent thematic data. The centerscentres also need to operate offline to produce reanalysis / hindcasts.

f. Prepare products suitable for external service provision at the ‘Interface’ shown in Figures 1 & 2. Products include QC thematic datasets (from stage c) and results of numerical models (from stage d).

g. That interface must have a discovery and viewing capabilities and the ability to download specific products in response to requests. It must also be able to deliver, probably quite large volumes of data, routinely to an agreed schedule to meet the needs of specific intermediate users.

The required support functions are elaborated further in 4.3.4; they are essentially to monitor and validate the performance of the MCS to assure the quality of its products, provide customer support in the form of interpretive tools and training, and prioritize and oversee the research and development needed to sustain the MCS.

3.7 The concepts of upstream providers, intermediate users & and end users

The division into upstream and downstream components of the service chain is based on the imperative “to produce information once but use it many times” for specific public or commercial end user applications. Not all environmental information services are suitable for delivery in this way, but wherever there is a need for information about the current or predicted future state of the environment, widely defined, it makes sense to try to meet this once rather than many times. This is particularly true when, as here, substantial resources (computers and skilled people) are needed to assemble basic state data, assimilate them and use high resolution, complex models to predict future states. This lesson has been learned and applied extensively in operational meteorology and recent research has demonstrated that it is equally applicable to operational oceanography. Figure 1Figure 1 exemplifies the chosen architecture of the chain.

3.7.1 Upstream providers co ll ectiv ely co mpr ise the

Upstream providers of ( i) rel ev ant E O and in s itu data and atmo sp heric for cing


15


infor mation and (ii) supply the input that the Mar ine Core Serv ice (MC S). They provid emarine core service uses to create crosscutting/core products and data s erv ices (upstr eam servic es) , whichthat are the basis for intermediate users/downstream services as described above. Certain intermediate users may use information directly from the upstream providers without going through the marine core service but this is not the concern of this paper. The exp ected functio nal ity of the MC S is d escrib ed in p aragrap h 2.4. The eq uiv alent functional ity of the EO and in situ data p rov iders isThe upstream providers can be divided into a satellite earth observation (sometimes called "space" component, an atmospheric forcing component and an "in-situ" component. These components are described in sections 34.1 "The required space infrastructure" and 4 res pec tiv ely,4.2 "The required in situ infrastructure" and in the associated appendices. However in simple terms it is expected that these upstream providers will:

a. develop, construct and operate the space and ground based facilities necessary to deliver the required data; in fulfilling the delivery function, they will calibrate instrument measurements and convert them to geo-located estimates of geophysical, chemical or biological variables (i.e. generate level 2 data sets)

b. in some areas produce coherent, quality controlled data sets, possibly from multiple sources (i.e. generate level 3 products).

3.7.2 Note that intermediate users Intermediate users are recipients of the data and products generated by the MCS from the combined use of atmospheric forcing information and basic in situ and EO data, models and data assimilation. Typically they will generate information services that

a. downscale the larger scale MC S marine core service products to the local scale and increase the number of analysed, predicted state variables at the local level to meet end user needs . Therefore, s uch s erv ices will gener all y req uire the c apture of ad ditio nal fo rms of data to del iv er eco nomic or so cietal b enefit.

b. integrate marine core service products with other information Typically such additional data might be high resolution meteorological forcing in delivering storm surge predictions, socio-economic in a policy development context, pressureshuman activity (e.g. catch and fisheries effort data) to s et al ongs id e s tate v ariabl es from the MCS to unders tand obs erv ed env iro nmental imp acts , as s ets at ris k in managing a hazard ous ev ent, v essel identification and tr acking infor mation for maritime surv eill ance etc. T he res ul ting info rmatio n s erv ices are

to provide useful downstream services. It is rec ognis ed that downs tream s erv ices tod ay might b eco me cor e s erv ices in future, as multipl e uses are fo und fo r p articul ar d ata sets and typ es of info rmation . Ther efor efit with the definition o f these two ser v ice str eams has been co uched in general terms to p rov ide fl exibil ity in futureGMES philosophy (see section 2.3 "Downstream Sector".Ultimately the public will validate, or not, the benefit of GMES. But, as characterised in Table 1 above, in general end users can be categorised as:


governmental departments/agencies, at EU or Member State level, that require marine products and information for developing and validating policies respectively (e.g. DG Env iro nment, DG Fis h, DG TR EN European Commission Directorates General, National Departments of Environment,.) ;

“public downstream services” that actually implement public policies, and are frequently part of the mandate of European or national agencies (e.g. flood risk managers, environmental protection agencies, immigration and drug control agencies, police forces);

providers of maritime services of various kinds, (e.g. shipping, port operations, coast guards,.. )

commercial and industrial end users (e.g. offshore oil, gas and aggregate extraction companies, fishing companies, …).

research institutes investigating the functioning of the ocean

3.8 Simulations – how to respond to ‘What if?’ questionsMuch policy-making raises questions of the kind ‘What if we were to do x or y?’ as a precursor to formulating a response to an unwelcome impact of a pressure. This requirement was identified at the October 2005 workshop and the MCSmarine core service needs to respond to it.The requirement can be met in a number of ways, but in essence, the capability is needed to run experiments in which all of the important processes affecting the outcome are mimicked and the consequences of the hypothesised action are tested. Scaled physical models can be used for this purpose to test the consequences of changing the morphology of an estuary for example, but on the scale of the oceans and seas recourse has to be made to numerical earth system20 models of sufficient scope to internalise all the important processes and feedbacks between them. The models developed to assimilate data and model oceanographic processes for the MCSmarine core service are certainly capable of mimicking internal processes sufficiently well and therefore test the consequences of possible changes to inputs, e.g. of the consequences of large scale changes to nutrients from land based sources, but they are not designed for this purpose. Fortunately suitable world class earth system models have been developed and do exist within Europe - to assess the consequences for climate of increased greenhouse gas emissions and deforestation for example. The obvious strategy is not to attempt to replicate such (major) capabilities but for the intermediate and downstream users to contract out for them when required. However it would be misleading to suggest that these "what if" scenarios" can be pushed too far in the future. According to Nature21 "there is a long way to go in the science before regional-impact studies provide a suitable basis for detailed planning". The more structured approach to satellite deployment through the space component of GMES and the insights into the in-situ monitoring network will certainly contribute towards a better understanding of regional climates. The measurements required for climate studies of ocean circulation are almost identical to those needed for operational oceanography. But it is not a primary function of the marine core service to feed climate studies.

20 In general such models need to embrace the important, relevant processes on/in the land, sea, cryosphere and atmosphere, and interactions between them.

21 "validation required" Editorial Nature 463, 849 (18 February 2010)


17


4 The required observational components

4.1 The required space infrastructureAppendix 3 provides the recommendations of the Space Infrastructure WG endorsed by the Implementation Group. These are primarily addressed to ESA to secure the EO data required by the MCS.The main recommendations are:

a. General recommendations:i. Continuity of observation is crucial. This is particularly critical around

2010 when data gaps could occur for several of the most critical observations. Building the first of the GMES satellites must be taken most urgently.

ii. It is more critical to establish satellite series for sustainable service availability than to try optimizing the specifications and designing for any one satellite and its instruments, if the latter leads to expensive, non renewable satellites. Establishing satellite series should lead to significantly lower production costs.

iii. GMES should allow for research and technological developments. In particular, the possibility of embarking new instruments with the potential to meet GMES needs should be considered. Wide Swath altimetry and geostationary ocean colour are the two most important new technology developments that will benefit the GMES MCS in the long run. A workshop on space and the Arctic22 organised under the Swedish presidency in 2009 concluded that ice thickness measurements were a priority for the expected increased human activit in the far north

b. Specific recommendations:i. The Jason series (high accuracy altimeter system for climate

applications and as a reference for other missions) is an essential and critical component of the GMES satellite programme for MCS. Including this type of mission into the Sentinel fleet must be a priority for GMES.

ii. The MCS requires a high resolution altimeter system with at least three altimeters in addition to the Jason series. Sentinel-3 should include a constellation of two satellites, flying simultaneously, providing adequate coverage and operational robustness. Instrumentation costs for S3 should be reduced as much as possible to allow for a two-satellite system.

iii. Compared to the present design of S3 instrumentation, the priority for Sea Surface Temperature is for high accuracy dual view measurements. The large swath requirement has a much lower priority, in particular (but not only), if S3 is a two satellite system. As far as Ocean Colour is concerned, a sensor having a similar spectral resolution to MERIS is essential to meet the important shelf and coastal ocean water quality measurement requirements. The use of a SeaWiFS type of instrument (reduced number of channels) would serve only the minimum operational requirements for the open ocean.

22 Workshop Conclusions, Space and the Arctic Workshop, Stockholm 20 ‐21 October, 2009, Under the auspices of the Swedish presidency of the European Union


iv. SAR data (Sentinel 1) are required for oil spill detection and sea ice monitoring. These are European core data in the sense that they have multiple uses and are required for downstream services in the marine domain. The requirement is for at least one and preferably two SAR missions in addition to the other non-European missions (e.g. Radarsat).

v. Access to other European and non-European (e.g. NPOESS, RADARSAT) satellite data in real time is fundamental for the MCS. The GMES ambition is autonomy in information services but measurements are a global responsibility.

vi. Detailed ground segment requirements remain to be addressed. But the main recommendation is likely to be that the GMES ground segment should develop robust interfaces with EUMETSAT Ocean & Sea Ice SAF and with the MCS satellite Thematic Assembly Centres. The current offer from ESA and EUMETSAT is described in section 4.3.3.

4.2 The required in situ infrastructureTHIS NEEDS RE-WRITING. IT NEEDS TO SAY SOMETHING ABOUT WHAT PARAMETERS (temperatures, salinity, current etc) ARE NEEDED FOR THE PRODUCTS PRODUCED BY THE MARINE CORE SERVICE MONITORING AND FORECASTING CENTRES AND FOR THE PRODUCTS PRODUCED BY THE THEMATIC ASSEMBLY CENTRES. PARAMETERS THAT ARE NOT NEEDED SHOULD NOT BE INCLUDED) Appendix 4 contains the report of the in situ infrastructure WG. As in the case of the space infrastructure, it identifies the candidate technologies that are available for a composite operational in situ observing system capable of meeting the needs of an MCS serving the purposes identified in section 2.1; essentially they are those that are sufficiently tried and tested in such applications. Potentially useful technologies are identified for possible future use too.Candidate observing systems comprise:

a. Drifting Argo Floats for the measurement of temperature and salinity profiles to ~2000m and, by tracking them, mean subsurface currents.

b. Research vessels which deliver complete suites of multidisciplinary parameters from the surface to the ocean floor. The information collected is of high accuracy, quite necessary for various validation tasks, but very sparse, with intermittent spatial coverage, at very high cost of operations and with very limited real-time transmission. Such vessels should be encouraged to collect and report routine surface observations whenever they are underway.

c. XBTs launched by research vessels and ships of opportunity underway for the measurement of temperature and salinity profiles to ~450-750m depth.

d. Surface Moorings capable of measuring subsurface temperature and salinity profiles in particular continuously over long periods of time. Currents are often monitored and meteorological measurements are usually made too. Biofouling restricts the range of measurements that can be made from long deployments in the photic zone but surface salinity and biogeochemical measurements are attempted.

e. Ferry-Box and other regional ship of opportunity measurement programmes for surface transects which may include temperature, salinity, turbidity, chlorophyll, nutrient, oxygen, pH and algal types.


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f. The Continuous Plankton Recorder (CPR) operated by the Sir Alister Hardy Foundation for Ocean Science which is towed from merchant ships on their normal sailings in order to monitor the near-surface plankton of the North Atlantic and North Sea on a monthly basis.

g. The network of tide gauges which provides long term reference and validation sea level data.

h. Priorities for implementing these technologies in a coordinated manner to provide continuity and expand their utilisation, particularly to achieve near real time data collection, are discussed further in section 4.

The European Marine Observation and Data Network, as part of the marine knowledge 2020Error: Reference source not found process, aims to assemble in-situ measurements for use by public and private operators. Preparatory actions already underway are assembling biological, chemical and physical parameters in selected sea-basins. It is a contractual obligation for these parameters to be prepared in a form that can be used by prototype or operational marine core services. These actions should also clarify whether there is a need to strengthen these monitoring networks.

4.3 The Meteorological ForcingIT NEEDS SOMETHING HERE – EVEN IF IT IS SHORT AND SAYS THAT EVERYTHING IS OK


5 The Strategic Implementation Plan

5.1 Principles and sources of guidance usedThe IG has adopted a number of principles:

a. GMES is a joint initiative of the EC, ESA & Member States so it is assumed that all have a vested interest in its success, judged by the value of the information services that it delivers, and will be willing to commit commensurate resources and adapt working practices to achieve that success.

b. To be judged successful in these terms, the MCS must be genuinely driven to support intermediate users on behalf of their end users, all of whom will appreciate the value of its services and be able to determine its output & influence its evolution.

c. Given the impossibility of operating an IG containing a large number of users, representatives from EEA, EMSA, EUMETNET and the Maritime Policy Task Force will federate intermediate and end user needs. They were able to draw on their own and colleagues experience of existing services in Member States and from relevant ESA GSEs.

d. The MCS must be designed and implemented to meet identified needs in a reliable, easy to use, operational239 manner, with information of useful precision and stability.

e. There is considerable scope for integration and coordination of existing efforts. The MCS must:

i. make maximum use of past investment and existing facilities;ii. be sustainable on an operational basis, with appropriate governance

and funding built into the system.Guidance has been obtained as follows:

a. Advice on scientific/technical matters and priorities for R&D from the ESF.b. Current user needs and experience in meeting them from EuroGOOS

members and their publications, the EEA and EMSA;c. Proffered national guidance and proposals.d. Published material on best practice from GOOS, GCOS, and Regional

Conventionse. Findings and capabilities developed from FP5/6/7 projects: the MERSEA IPand

MyOcean integrated projects in particular.f. T he experience of the ESA GSEs: MarCoast and Polar View in particular.g. Experience from EUMETNET in generating efficiencies through collaborative

efforts: in particular in coordinating in situ observing systems.

5.2 Foundations of the Marine Core ServiceIn keeping with the imperative to ensure that the needs of end users are understood and acted upon, and to make maximum use of past investment and

23 Here we mean having guaranteed 24 hour / 7 days a week availability


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existing facilities these matters have been reviewed to establish sound foundations upon which to build the MCS.The identified needs are summarised in section 2.1 and appendix 2.The MCS foundations can be characterised as:

a. the existing infrastructure in the form of in situ observing systems, EO systems and data collection and modelling systems that are in place to provide environmental information services;

b. those information services themselves, andc. Previous and current R&D projects that have or are delivering relevant

understanding, tools and capabilities.This review has itself been greatly aided by the proceedings and papers of the four triennial EuroGOOS conferences, stretching back to 1996, past R&D projects such as MerSea Strand 1 and the ongoing SEPRISE project.

5.2.1 Existing infrastructure was identified in the form of:

a. In situ observing systems funded by Member States to meet national needs, e.g. for defence, safety & environmental protection, to fulfil national obligations under Regional Conventions and Directives, sustain research programmes and participate in international programmes partially funded by non-EU states. Generally these have not been designed for multiple uses and the research programmes are rarely funded on other than a short term basis. They do tend to use the technologies listed in Appendix 4, to a variable extent. Any coordination that takes place seems to be on an ad hoc, best endeavours basis, based on the premise that the sum of

b. the parts will probably represent a satisfactory outcome.c. Space based Earth Observation systems funded by Member States via their

respective ESA and EUMETSAT membership, or through national programmes. The investments are used to sustain research programmes, meet operational needs, e.g. in defence and meteorology, develop & demonstrate technology, improve industrial capacity and build markets. Access is also gained on various terms to EO systems funded and operated by non-European Space Agencies. The resulting data are used for utilitarian purposes.

d. For the marine domain, the technologies that are used and the data requirements and priorities are shaped by the requirement to monitor state, as described above, and what it is feasible to measure to useful accuracy from space based instruments. Appendix 3 characterises current needs, on the basis of the demonstrated capabilities of the current infrastructure. The key issue is that, with the exception of the (EU and non-EU) meteorological (and inaccessible defence) systems, none of the current systems capable of meeting these needs are truly operational. As a result continuity of data supply cannot be guaranteed. This apart, Europe has access to all the necessary capabilities and technologies to meet those needs, in particular through ESA and its Member States and their commitment to GMES.

e. Ocean Modelling funded by Member States to meet national needs, e.g. for Defencedefence, safety & environmental protection and to sustain research programmes. There are huge numbers of the latter, built firstly for research


purposes, impossible to describe in a plan such as this, and arguably with an uneasy connexion to the needs described in section 2.1, other than through the results of those research programmes. Those that are relevant to implementation of the plan, i.e. capable of being operated operationally are identified with their attend data management infrastructure in section 4.3.6. It is important to recall again that models that have the necessary, demonstrated performance capabilities require major investment in very powerful computing facilities that are sufficiently robust (e.g. with appropriate attention being paid to backed-up power supplies and telecommunication links and to staffing). There are rather few of these and most are linked in some way to the meteorological services.

f. Operational information dissemination of the real time component and high volume satellite and model output at least is always going to be an issue. Fortunately this is not a problem which is unique to the MCS and so the presumption has to be that it will be solved through the use of existing commercially or otherwise available solutions – not through bespoke methods. The EUMETCAST facility is an operational facility currently available for distribution of the SAF data referred to below. The internet provides a suitable vehicle for the exchange of small amounts of data in the form of ftp files and for the discovery/view functions see section 4.3.7

5.2.2 Relevant existing information servicesinclude those provided: in non-real time and real-time

a. as public goods by Member State agencies for international Conventions such as HELCOM, OSPAR, Barcelona and ICES and for/via the EEA: e.g. as environmental / climate assessments;

b. as public goods by Member State agencies in the form of national environmental assessments and to help secure safety of life and property. Typically the core information services for the latter are provided by the National Meteorological Services for elaboration in downstream services by national agencies according to their particular mandates (e.g. flood risk management, pollution control, etc).

c. as public and private goods provided by EuroGOOS ( http://www.eur o g o o s . o r g/ ) agencies, some of whom provide prototype MCS type and downstream services: e.g. as analyses and model based forecasts of sea level, temperature and currents for the regional seas, oil slick and algal bloom forecasts;

d. as thematic data services by European agencies for their Members: e.g. the EUMETSAT Ocean & Ice SAF ( http://www.osi - s a f . o rg / ), ocean forcing information by ECMWF, marine observations by EUMETNET and the ESA rolling archive providing access to products obtained from the ERS and ENVISAT missions.

e. as service demonstration projects delivering relevant geo-information on an operational basis (e.g. ESA GSEs: Polar View ( http://www. p o l ar v ie w . o r g / ) for ice services & MarCoast ( http://marcoa s t.in f o / ) for oil spill and water quality services).

f. as operational services for oil-spill detection and attribution run by the European Maritime Safety Agency on behalf of Member State Authorities

http://marcoast.info/

http://www.polarview.org/

http://www.osi-saf.org/

http://www.eurogoos.org/

http://www.eurogoos.org/


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g. as private goods by public and private organisations offered to their customers to confer commercial advantage e.g. for enabling increased efficiency and/or effectiveness (offshore industries, transport).

All of these have some lessons to offer and provide points of departure for the MCS design. In particular: the high and known quality of the data required to meet the legal requirements of the Conventions; the tested architecture of the Meteorological Services provision as a useful model for that of the MCS and its downstream services; the value of the critical mass and the resulting world class performance that can be achieved by carrying out some functions at a European level, and the possibility of creating and satisfying markets by tailoring and fusing data within specialist services, particularly where these can be served, in part at least, by core information generated once and used many times. There are difficulties too. As far as the Conventions are concerned, the time between “sampling events” and publication of assessed results is presently about three years. The involvement of an operational MCS, as described in section 6.1, may be able to reduce this delay.

5.2.3 Past and current R&D projectsSome of these were funded within the 5th, 6t h and 6t h 7th Framework Programmes, others through ESA or by national investment. It is neither necessary nor possible in this plan to describe them all but there are examples which have contributed substantially to the building blocks of an effective, efficient MCS. For example:from the Framework Programmes, in the form of:

a. Observing systems foundations – EDIOS, ODON, SeaDataNetb. In situ observing systems – GYROSCOPE, ANIMATE, BRIMOM, FerryBoxc. EO based observing systems – SOFT, GAMBLE d. Capacity Building – MAMA, PAPA, ARENA, GRAND e. Sea-level monitoring – GAVDOS, ESEAS-RIf. Safety of Shipping – MaxWave, IRISg. Ice Services – DAMOCLESh. Pre-operational pilots – TOPAZ, IOMASA, MFSTEP i. GMES preparations – MerSea Strand 1, OCEANIDES j. Integrated Projects – MERSEA, ECOOP, MyOcean

The MyOcean IP is currently developing and demonstrating the capabilities required of an MCS as discussed further in sections 4.3.2 and 4.3.5 -7.From ESA projects:a. Medspiration – developing a European service for near real time precise sea

surface temperatureb. Globcolour – developing a European service for ocean colour.c. The GODAE Sea Surface Temperature Pilot Project (GHRSST-PP) is a good

example of an international project that has spun up a global service, with European contributions from the Medspiration project and EUMETSAT Ocean & Sea Ice SAF, and which now provides an excellent basis for a truly operational, comprehensive European SST service within the MCS, to mirror the US Global Data Analysis Center (GADC).


In addition there have been innumerable national R&D projects which have developed relevant specific capabilities, many of which are now contribute to operational services. These include:

a. MERCATOR (France) – global & regional modelsb. FOAM (UK) – global and regional modelsc. Coriolis (France) – a data management systemd. MONCOZE (Norway) – for coastal environment management e. SmartBuoy (UK) – in situ physical, biological and chemical monitoring f. A l g@line (Finland, Estonia) - automated ship borne monitoring g. Seatrack Web (Sweden/Denmark) – an oil drift forecasting systemh. POL (UK) – a coastal observatoryi. POSEIDON (Greece) – an in situ monitoring and forecasting systemj. ADRICOSM (Italy) – an in situ monitoring and forecasting system for the

Adriatic SeaAll of these have brought or are bringing some new insights and tools of relevance to operational oceanography and hence to the MCS. Unsurprisingly the recent MERSEA IP iswas of particular importance in developing and demonstrating capabilities that are fundamental importance to an operational MCS. Much of the ensuing design is based on the exploitation of those capabilities and lessons learned. There is more to do to develop observing systems, other data collection mechanisms & forms (e.g. surveys) and models to provide the information for soundly based ecosystem management and the ECOOP IP is needed to help push these capabilities further towards the coast. Particular lessons were learnt It is very important that the MCS,as an operational system, has a closely coupled R&D programme – another important lesson learned in operational meteorology, and elsewhere.Finally the lessons learned in the MyOcean project are described in a separate section.

5.3 The proposed strategy and its applicationThe requirement is to be responsive to intermediate & and, through them, to end users, who will respectively deliver and use the information generated as outlined below to inform policy making, validation and implementation in the areas outlined in paragraph 2.1. The chosen strategy to accomplish this is to build on the foundations described above by making maximum use of existing systems and past investment in knowledge and tools. The existing systems are distributed so the design of the MCS must be distributed. In effect a system of largely existing systems and those under development will be the goal.The strategy must then be to analyse the required functionality of the component systems to establish whether and if so where they exist or might easily be upgraded to perform as required. The reports of the WGs on the space based and in situ infrastructures are used for this, together with other knowledge and insights obtained as discussed in section 4.1.5.1 " Principles and sources of guidanceused". Remaining gaps are identified, at least in functional terms and hopefully with some candidates to fill them. Where possible a road map for that process is suggested and priorities are established and recommendations made.The suitability of the strategy is tested in section 6 through a small number of end to end case studies of its envisaged application.

mailto:Alg@line


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5.3.1 ArchitectureThe key step is to recognise that modelling of the marine environment can and needs to be carried out at different scales in different domains and that biological and chemical processes take place within the context of the prevailing physical environment. This recognition leads to the adoption of two categories of nesting24 10 In principle a variable scale model can achieve a similar economy of computing resource by concentrating high resolution where it is needed and relaxing to larger scales elsewhere. But the models that are readily available for actual and near operational use are largely based on the use of a fine scale model covering a small domain embedded within a model of larger scale and domain. Ideally there is two way exchange of properties at the boundaries, but one way exchange from the large to the small is also practiced. Models of biological and chemical processes require specification of the physical domain in which they take place. These are imported from a physical model. of models; (i) physically from the global, to the regional, to the national, to the local and (ii) nesting of ecosystem process modelling within an appropriate physical model.For (i), the actual choice of domains is determined by the combination of physical geography and user need. Thus:

a. The Mediterranean, Baltic and Black Seas have their own particular physical and ecosystem characteristics largely defined by their bathymetry, fluvial inputs and limited but important exchanges with their adjoining seas.

b. The Arctic Ocean is predicted to be the location of the most rapid and dramatic climate changes during the 21st century, with the potential of major ramifications for mid-latitude climate. It also plays a major role in the freshwater balance of the North Atlantic and is a very hostile environment.

c. The North West shelf is one of the most complex in the world in terms of the intensity of marine exploitation, multiplicity of industries, services and social amenities, complexity and detail of regulation, adjoining population density and industrial development. It is also subject to input from large European rivers, agricultural run off and sensitivity to climate change.

d. The North Atlantic plays a major role in the global circulation and has significant effects on European weather and climate. It provides the boundary conditions directly for the North West shelf and interacts strongly with the Arctic Ocean.

Seasonal and climate prediction are impossible without knowledge of the three dimensional state and dynamics of the global ocean. Europe has global interests requiring access to global information.It is envisaged that the MCS will comprise at least one operational modelling and data assimilation activity for each of these domains, with an exchange of boundary conditions as necessary: e.g. between the global and ocean basins and their shelf seas, and between the enclosed regional

24 In principle a variable scale model can achieve a similar economy of computing resource by concentrating high resolution where it is needed and relaxing to larger scales elsewhere. But the models that are readily available for actual and near operational use are largely based on the use of a fine scale model covering a small domain embedded within a model of larger scale and domain. Ideally there is two way exchange of properties at the boundaries, but one way exchange from the large to the small is also practiced. Models of biological and chemical processes require specification of the physical domain in which they take place. These are imported from a physical model.


seas and their adjoining ocean or shelf sea. The resolution of the models is not prescribed but should aim to be state-of-the-art for provision of the common denominator data that are required from the MCS.Many examples of the adoption of this architecture can be cited; it is almost ubiquitous in its application in the research domain. Figure 3 is taken from a presentation by J.I. Allen of the Plymouth Marine Laboratory at the MERSEA Annual Science meeting held in London during March 2006.

Figure 3 complex ERSEM model nested in the physical POLYCOMS in this example aims to characterize benthic and water column processes


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Figure 3a illustrates the use of physical nesting. The complex ERSEM model, which is nested in the physical POLCOMS in this example, aims to characterise benthic and water column processes and is illustrated in figure 3b.In this example, in an operational context, the North Atlantic and Atlantic Margin Models might contribute to the MCS, whilst the higher resolution models would take boundary conditions and be employed in the provision of down stream services that could justify the higher resolutions.In addition, as outlined in section 2.4, the modelling centres need to be supported by data assembly centres and service delivery capabilities to carry out the operational and support functions described there. Before outlining how these might be implemented, it is noteworthy but not a coincidence that this architecture and rationale for segmentation into the global ocean and regional seas is reflected into the current organisation of operational oceanographic services by public bodies within intergovernmental programmes.The Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS) htt p ://www.i o c- g o o s . o r g/ has now organised its work into a global component, largely targeted upon understanding and describing the role of the oceans in climate research and prediction, and regional observing systems developed by Regional Alliances. These regional observing systems aim to deliver information relevant to climate on these scales but also to the full range of policy issues described in paragraph 2.1 for the European area.EuroGOOS is the GOOS Regional Alliance for Europe. It liaises, at an institutional level, with MedGOOS in the Mediterranean to work with non-European States there and with Black Sea GOOS, to aid capacity building.From this liaison and through its 33 member institutes, a number of Regional Task Teams have been set up based on the rationale above. Several of these have made formal agreements to form Operational Oceanographic Systems /Networks (collectively known as ROOSs) to implement best practice and achieve effective day to day collaboration. At present these comprise:

a. Arctic TT • Arctic GOOS, with a pending MOU designed to deliver operational oceanography in the Arctic.

b. Baltic TT • BOOS, with an MoU between 19 institutes to do likewise in the Baltic

c. North West Shelf TT • NOOS, with a MoU between 19 institutes with an interest and relevant capabilities on the North West shelf, including the North Sea.

d. Biscay / Iberian TT • IBI-ROOS (MOU pending), with similar interest and capabilities in those shelf areas

e. Mediterranean collaboration • MOON, secured by a MoU between 26 institutes in the riparian states.

f. Black Sea – to be created.This is helpful because it provides a body of organisations, agencies and individuals that have learned to work together to provide operational oceanographic services and the associated infrastructure in the form of in situ observing systems, models, data assembly centres and communication/distribution systems to meet the needs of their end users.The available evidence suggests that the implementation of standard technologies and the development and deployment of new in situ sensors are organised

http://www.ioc-goos.org/


effectively at the regional level. A detailed knowledge of the physical, biological and chemical characteristics of the domain and appropriate logistic and technical expertise are generally available. Relatively rapid decisions can be taken and data exchange within a ROOS is normally very effective. It is less clear that deployments are made other than to meet national priorities, i.e. regional coordination of network design is weak.A global coordination is needed for homogenisation of sampling criteria at regional level, for exchange of experience and information, for homogenisation of ual ityqual ity assurance/control. Global coordination is required to define common protocols and guidelines (quality assurance of field work, calibration – intercalibration of sensors, quality control procedures, standards, etc). ESA, EUMETSAT, their Member States and national space agencies have been very effective in building up these capabilities for the exploitation of EO data.

5.3.2 Impl ementing the architectur eIt is expected that thee Members of EuroGOOS will contribute towards the implementation and monitoring of the marine core service.

5.3.3 Prototype ArchitectureFigure 1 illustrates the functional architecture of the MCS in the context of data supply and downstream services. The functions which need to be carried out within an operational MCS are described briefly in section 2.2 and their connectivity is illustrated in figure 2.The MERSEA IP Co nso rtium, which c ompr ises 38 partners /co ntractor s, has ad op ted a functional arc hitectur e fo r a d emonstratio n of its p erc ep tion o f the MC S based on three Th ematic Asse mb ly Centre s (TAC) and fiv e Mo nitoring and Fo recas ting Centre s (M FC ) , which it jo intly des cr ib es as The matic Portals (TEPs ). T he fiv e M FC cov er the main oc ean do mains: Gl ob al , Arc tic, Nor th West Shelv es and NE Atl antic, Bal tic, and Med iterranean (the Bl ack s ea remains to b e integrated). Figure 4 p rovid es a schematic of the interco nnectio ns b etween the TEPs, which generall y has p hys ical impl ementation b ut in practice cons ists of a coll ection of serv ices distributed amo ng pr ov iders ’ physic al s ystems . Never theless, r espons ibil ity for the ne cess ary s erv ices res ides with the appr op riate TEP . This is an attractiv e conc ep t which, carried to a logic al co ncl us ion, s hould enabl e fl exib il ity in s erv ice d efinition and p rov is ion with new pl ayer s abl e to contr ib ute, p rovid ed that they co nfor m to ‘the r ul es of the game’ .


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Figure 4 Sc hematics o f t he Syst em’s arc hi tect ure, as i t i s being developed by t he ME R SEA P ro jec t , i nc luding T hemat ic A ssembly Centres and Monit oring and For ec asting C ent res.

5.3.3.1 How the parts fit together The MyOcean consortium is building a prototype service that includes five thematic Assembly Centres ansd seven Monitoring and Forecasting Centres engaged in modelling and assimilation for hindcasts, nowcasts and forecast in the global ocean and six European seas (see Figure 5). The process chain is shown in Figure 6.

Figure 5.area covered by monitoring and forecasting centres


Figure 6 Connectivity of the Thematic Assembly Centres, Modelling/Data Assimilation Centres and prototype MCS delivery i nt erf ac es being developed by MER SEA i nt erf ac e as developed in MyOcean.

Figure 5 illustrates the connectivity of the TACs to the modelling / assimilation centres and delivery interface, which in a simplified way mirrors the required functionality, described in figures 2 and 3 and section 2.4. In this manifestation, the TACs are in charge of processing the required in situ and satellite data to meet the needs of the centres so that they can meet the needs of end users through the delivery interface. In addition, the forcing fields for the predictive models need to be secured from Numerical Weather prediction centres operated by the National Meteorological Services and ECMWF.The MERSEA conso rtium asser ts that in their manifes tation o f the MC S: “T he components of this s ystem o f systems are linked b y an infor mation s ys tem that al lows effic ient trans fer and exc hange o f d ata within the sys tem, as well as eas y acc es s to the p rod ucts by the users : timely delive ry of high v ol ume d ata and p rod ucts; d isc ov ery, ac cess, r etriev al o f pr oduc ts; monito ring of the MCS sys tem efficiency, us er d esk; implementation o f co mmon pr oc edur es, fo rmats , metad ata as agreed by international s tandard s (WM O, JCOMM).The I nfor mation Man agement sys tem will rel y on a p artners hip o f few p artners that will ded icate r eal manpower to it. T his partners hip wil l per fo rm c oor dinatio n activ ities to ensur e the l ink with international s tandardiz ation b odies , ensur e the MC S catal ogue maintenance, the us er d es k and the monito ring of the s ys tem as well as the maintenance and evolutio n of the MCS I nfor mation Management Sy stem. T he architecture conforms to the sp ecificatio ns of the WM O Informatio n Sys tem (WIS), which is d es igned and impl emented to s erv e the info rmation exchange need s of NMS and other national centres , suc h as rel ev ant non- NM HS agenc ies /us ers , national d is aster management pl atfor ms , res earc h, and international p rogr ammes. A majo r up grad e of the GTS, the WIS is being impl emented fro m 2006; it is artic ul ated aro und Data Coll ectio n and Pr oduc tion C entres (DC PC ), whos e miss ion is to ful fil an internatio nal respo nsib il ity for the generation and prov isio n fo r international d istr ibution o f d ata, fo rec ast prod ucts , p ro cess ed or v al ue- add ed infor mation, and /or for p rovid ing arc hiv ing s erv ices; and to pr ov ide bas ic WIS functio ns s uch as metadata c atalo gues, internet portals and data acc ess management.”


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5.3.3.2 User Interface The MyOcean products are available through a common interface with common standards for metadata, common procedures for downloading.

Figure 7 User interface for MyOcean allowing all measured and modeled parameters to be accessed through a common portal using common searching criteria.

5.3.3.3 standards

Need to find something about conformance with WMO, JCOMM, INSPIRE, OGC standards5.3.3.4 Compatibility with overall marine knowledge architecture The European Commission has set out a visionError: Reference source not found for an overall marine architecture including data from bathymetry, geology, physics, chemistry, biology and fisheries from surveys and near-real-time monitoring. It incorporates initiatives such as GMES and the Data Collection Framework for fisheries. A European Marine Observation and Data Network (EMODNET) is also being constructed to contribute to this architecture. In-situ measurements from EMODNET will contribute towards the Marine Core Service. EMODNET incorporates the concept of thematic assembly centres although these can distribute data directly rather than through a sea-basin monitoring and forecasting centre. It is also intended to set up sea-basin checkpoints that will analyse the quality and quantity of data for each sea basin and provide advice on the priorities for future investments in collecting and monitoring data.


5.3.3.5 Recommendations Whilst care will be needed to ensure robustness and avoid single points of failure, implementation based on the MERSEAMyOcean design, using the capabilities, tools, techniques, procedures and standards developed, adopted and being tested by the consortium, is an attractive way ahead and the IG recommends their adoption for the MCS. A key feature of the design is its commitment to interoperability and distributed functionality. This should allow potential contributors to the MCS, who are not members of the IP, to augment its capabilities by contributing needed services, provided that they operate according to the rules which ensure that interoperability and ease of use by intermediate users.Before amplifying this proposal, by identifying the opportunities for such augmentation, the proposed implementation of the space based and in situ is developed.

5.3.4 The space infrastructureThe Working Group Report relating to the MCS requirements of space segment has been adopted by the IG and is attached as Appendix 3; the recommendations are summarised in section 3.1. These have been acted upon by ESA in the design of Sentinels 1 and 3. The way forward on the follow-on to Jason 2 remains to be determined.ESA/PB-EO(2006)23, rev.2 of 7 November 2006 describes the GMES Space Component Implementation Plan from which the following is adapted:Both Sentinel 1 and 3 will have a design life of 7 years. Sentinel 1 will carry a SAR in a well-controlled dawn-dusk sun synchronous orbit at approx. 700 km altitude with an exact repeat of 12 days in support of multi-pass interferometry (for land use). With the SAR swath of approx. 240 km, a 12-day quasi-global coverage is ensured. The ground resolution exceeds that of ERS and Envisat in imaging mode. Sentinel 3 will carry a Cryosat-derived microwave altimeter (incl. a microwave radiometer and precise orbit determination device) and two imagers, for ocean/land colour observations (MERIS-like) and for sea/land- surface temperature observations (AATSR-like) into an Envisat-like orbit.It is accepted that 2 spacecrafts in orbit are needed to meet the coverage and observation frequency requirements for the Sentinel-1, -2 and -3 missions. However, an incremental deployment of capabilities is assumed. Therefore the implementation within Segment 1 includes only the first of a series of satellites per mission.The target launch date (2011-2012) is driven by the expected end-of-life of ENVISAT and other missions.ESA has a mandate, as part of the GMES programme approved by the ESA Member States, to:

a. manage and coordinate the overall GMES space infrastructure including the access to all satellite data required by GMES, starting in 2008;

b. develop GMES specific space infrastructure.The funding of the space component will come from both the ESA GMES programme and the FP7 Space Theme work programme, in agreement with the EC. Part of the EC’s FP7 funding (130 M€ total for 2007-2013) is planned to be made available to ESA in order to organise the coordinated and harmonised access to EO data for


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GMES services. In this framework, ESA is setting up agreements with EO mission data providers in Europe and worldwide. In doing so, ESA will assure that existing data providers will be fully involved. EUMETSAT has already signalled its interest in acting as a data provider for the MCS through the provision of a consolidated real time satellite data stream (including EUMETSAT, NOAA and other 3rd party data), with the exception of the SAR data.Therefore, it is necessary to harmonise the positions of the two organisations, and in this process, ESA will take due account of the position of EUMETSAT Member States and will make use of EUMETSAT assets/capabilities in the most efficient way for the delivery of EO data to the Marine Core Fast Track Service.A consolidated ESA/EUMETSAT approach regarding the provision of EO data to the MCS is expected to be available during 2007.As noted previously, specific coordination with EUMETSAT is necessary for the access to and provision of the data handled by EUMETSAT, as well as regarding the delivery of Sentinel-3 (S-3) data to the MCS. It is understood that EUMETSAT will operate the marine part of S-3.For this purpose, the EUMETSAT central ground segment will provide a (probably consolidated) level 1 satellite data stream as a direct input to the MCS. To further this some working assumptions have been reached between ESA and EUMETSAT, although these have yet to be approved by their governing bodies and the related financial provisions must be clarified. Provision is made as follows:

a. EUMETSAT will serve the Marine User Community both with routine and off-line products, whereas ESA will serve the Land Services community with all land products.

b. Starting from the launch of the first S-3 spacecraft, the scope of EUMETSAT’s operational role should be:

i. product generation and dissemination of all S-3 products routinely required by the MCS and the related downstream services;

ii. serving the offline requests of the Marine User Community for S-3 products (using a distributed network of centres of expertise)

iii. monitoring and control of spacecraft and flight operations segment;iv. payload data acquisition, consistent with the overall GMES ground

segment design under ESA’s responsibility.The ESA-EUMETSAT working assumptions further suggests that the “backbone” of the S-3 ground segment will consist of a polar ground station configuration that provides full orbit coverage together with a collocated centre based at EUMETSAT for serving the marine user community, i.e.:

a. ground and spacecraft monitoring & control;b. routine S-3 product generation and dissemination.

This backbone will be augmented by distributed centres for product archiving, retrieval and re-processing to fulfil “ad hoc” data requests.

In addition, it is possible that additional centres could be available to supplement the payload data acquisition function (as a back-up).

The Ground Segment of the Space Infrastructure required for the MCS consists of two stages: (i) the basic processing that generates ocean data products from each individual sensor; and (ii) the additional processing that prepares data from multiple sources for operational tasks such as assimilation into ocean forecasting models.


The first stage is a space agency task, following well established EO practices. Previously responsibility for the second stage, if it takes place at all, has been shared in an ad hoc way between the space agencies, major data users and the EO science community. It is recommended that for the MCS this stage of additional processing should be performed by Thematic Assembly Centres (TACs) as an integral part of the MCS, tailored to the special requirements of operational users of particular data products. Implementation of these latter functions is described in section 4.3.5.

5.3.4.1 Data products from Sentinel-3 sensorsThe ground segment tasks for commissioning new sensors and performing data processing to deliver level 2 products (atmospherically corrected measures of a remotely senseocean property, sampled on a grid oriented along and across the satellite track) are well established. Noting the plans of the space agencies noted above, in the case of the Sentinel missions required to support the MCS, it is assumed that ESA will calibrate and commission the new sensors and that, in the case of Sentinel 3, Eumetsat will manage the data processing to deliver Level 2 products for the ocean. Table 2 identifies the outline time-of-delivery required from the ground segment for the Sentinel-3 ocean data products.To ensure the highest quality of data, current best practices for the ground segment should be followed but with two notable differences; it is essential to maintain an adequate data product validation programme throughout the sensor lifetime, and periodic reprocessing of data must be anticipated.Table 2 Outline delivery requirements for Sentinel-3 ocean data productsSensor Product delivery requirementAltimeter “precise” IGDR within one daySST Level 2 data in L2P format in real time (within 3

hours).

Ocean Colour

Level 1 and 2 products within one day

Hitherto, because ESA Explorer missions have been launched in association with a strong science user sector, any validation activity beyond the commissioning phase has often been omitted from the ground segment budget and in practice left to the science community. This approach is unacceptable for the Sentinel-3 mission whose goal is to deliver satellite observations to meet operational needs. In order to be fit for purpose, an essential component of Sentinel-3 level 2 data products is pixel-by-pixel error estimates. This implies a well planned programme to acquire independent validation observations, including in situ measurements, on which the error statistics can be based. It must continue as long as operational products are being delivered. It is essential that such validation programmes are planned and budgeted from the outset as an integral component of the ground segment task to deliver each level 2 data product needed by the MCS.The MCS is concerned not only with supplying near-real time data for operational use but also with establishing an accurate long-term record of the ocean for climate purposes. It is the experience of all recent ocean satellite missions that the accuracy of data products can be improved by refining the processing algorithms following months or years of experience and careful analysis of the sensor calibration and product validation characteristics. In order to ensure a consistent climate record from a sensor throughout its lifetime, it is essential to re-process the entire historic dataset whenever major improvements are made to the processing algorithms. A programme of reprocessing should therefore be planned and


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budgeted from the outset as an integral part of the ground segment task for Sentinel-3 sensors.

5.3.4.2 Data products from Sentinel-1 SARFor Sentinel-1, the primary ground segment tasks relevant to the MCS can be defined according to the following application areas:

a. oil pollution monitoringb. ship detection and fishery c. monitoring sea ice and iceberg monitoringd. open ocean (sea state) surveillance

Near real time, wide swath operating mode is required for the first three services, whereas the latter need access to near real time image mode or wave mode data. As the duty cycle for the data intensive SAR is restricted the ground segment will need to carefully combine baseline acquisitions to properly service the above application areas.The ground segment will need to provide operational, long-term services, short ordering times for ad hoc needs (one or two days), short latency between data capture and availability on the ground (under 2 hours) and rapid data processing (20-30 minutes).In the context of the MCS for the Arctic, it is necessary to produce wide-swath SAR image strips calibrated as normalised radar backscatter cross-section (Level 1b), in near real- time. For instance, for the monitoring of the Arctic circumpolar region, 3-day coverage is necessary for reliable ice deformation estimates (this amounts to about 6500 wide swath images per year.) More frequent acquisitions for limited regions will be needed on a case- by-case basis for specific operational services. The ESA rolling archive for ASAR has already demonstrated the capability to deliver near real time SAR strips to support both routine Arctic sea ice monitoring and specific operational applications but in future clear guarantees will need to be provided for data delivery, as is the case for RADARSAT now.

5.3.5 The in situ infrastructureThe Implementation Group Report relating to the required in situ infrastructure is attached at Appendix 4. This reviews the key observing system technologies and the modalities of a data collection and management system that must deal with its multi- scalar, multi – ownership and highly distributed characteristics. These considerations have been addressed in and used to recommend priorities and essential coordination activities.Ther e are sev eral d ifficul ties assoc iated with the d epl oy ment of sys tems based on these technol ogies. Al mos t al l are Presently this infrastructure is fragmented. Much is deployed for research purposes or as national contributions to ongoing environmental assessment programmes committed under the Regional Conventions. Thes e l atterThere are national efforts to coordinate measurements such as MEDIN in the UK or Coriolis in France and various initiatives coordinate specific types of measurements of physical parameters– measurement buoys (SEPRISE project now closed), FerryBox Community 25 .EuroArgo 26 .

25 http://www.ferrybox.org/26 http://www.euro-argo.eu/


Preparatory Actions under the European Marine Observation and Data Network (EMODNET) framework are aiming to deliver harmonised data on a sea-basin scale. Most of these parameters – bathymetry, geology, chemistry and biology – will not be delivered in real-time - for the preparatory phase at least. But the physical parameters will be from 2012 onwards and it is planned that these will feed into the GMES marine core service.It is believed that the present network is not sufficiently fine-grained but there are no studies indicating what further measurements are needed or where they are needed. There is some consensus that the present Argo float network is sufficient for the global monitoring and forecasting centre but that more measurements may be needed for the finer-detail models used in regional sea-basin. Most tend to be concentrated in coastal waters and none d el iv ersfew d el iv er real time data. Al though s ome attempt has b een made to c oor d inate d epl oyments for ind iv id ual research prog rammes , there is no mechanis m at p res ent to c oor d inate effor ts to p rod uce what might be d escr ibed as a d esigned, co mpos ite networ k. The ODON project, listed in section 4(d) ,5.2.3 "Past and current R&D projects" developed techniques for this b ut they are no t the effective design of spatial-temporal sampling strategies for water temperature and salinity observing system in North Sea and Baltic Sea but nobody is known to have b een us ed since the end of the pr ojectused these techniques in earnest.Indeed despite some attempts during the process for the impact assessment of marine knowledge there is still no overall view of the adequacy of the present network. Two efforts underway should help to clarify this matter. Firstly the MyOcean partners should indicate where there is a need for better in-situ data for calibrating or validating models and secondly the ur-EMODnet preparatory actions will identify the spatial coverage of the present network and identify whether the requirements of the marine core service could be met through better access to existing measurements or whether more measurements are needed. In order to make progress it d oes seem that two specific actions are needed. Firstly, where the impact of the data is either global or pan-European it wouldmight be appropriate for an investment to be made by the EC on behalf of Member States or by the Member States acting together. A case of this kind has been put for investment in the Argo technology within the European Roadmap for Research Infrastructures. It should be taken up. The impact of the CPRContinuous Plankton Recorder (measured by the maturity of the technology, the length and extent of the existing record and uniqueness and importance of the data which result) is a further candidate for such coordinated investment.Secondly, there is a need and opportunity within the context of GMES, supported jointly by the Commission, ESA and Member States, for integration and better coordination of in situ monitoring efforts. OnThe sea-basin checkpoints, proposed within the regiona l scal e,Marine Knowledge 2020 Communication Error:Reference source not found and due to be tested i n the 2011-2013 period, will provide platforms at a sea-basin level for examining monitoring networks and advising where the priorities are for strengthening. T he EuroGOOS Regional Task Teams or Operational Oceanographic Systems/Networks (where they have been formed) would be id eal ly pl aced to ta ke this on, p er ha ps c oordi na ted overa ll by the EEA2711. In d ue co urs e a E UMETNE T l ike arrangement might be put in pl ace fo r be expected to contribute to this purp os e. There is a need fo r a

27 A cco rding to it s Mandat e (espec iall y Art 3, Co uncil Regulat ion (EEC) No 1210/90 of 7 M ay 1990 ) E EA play s a key ro le in t he Euro pean in -sit u mo nitoring co mmunity. In July 2004 EEA out line d it s v iew of the o bject iv es and ro le of in-situ mo nitoring wit hin GME S ( G AC (2 004 )6 ), f o llowed by a first progress repo rt on the dev elo pme nt o f the GME S in -situ mo nito ring co mpo nent in Nov ember 2004 (GAC(2004)21


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rel ativ el y s mall inv es tment in efforts to id entify where s uch actio ns would b ear mos t fruit, and it is hop ed that can b e fo und within the GME S Sp ace C omponent of FP7. effort. As would the European Environment Agency (EEA)28. According to the 2008 GMES CommunicationError: Reference source not found

The EEA is expected to play an important role, in coordination with the Commission, in relation to the supervision of some services and coordination with user communities under the SEIS umbrella. Some specific coordination activities could be delegated to other existing relevant coordination bodies29 .

On the global scale the Joint WMO-IOC Technical Commission for Oceanography and Marine Meteorology (JCOMM) provides an appropriate mechanism at an intergovernmental level for planning and coordinating the acquisition, exchange and management of marine observations, although it would be helpful if a mechanism for developing a common EU position on this could be agreed, particularly if EU funding is provided for specific components of the global observing network, such as the Argo float technology.At this s tageIn the meantime, whilst waiting for the more comprehensive overview of the current needs that is expected in 2012 or 2013, the following priorities are suggested to guid e these two actio ns:

a. sustain the Argo network ~ 800 new floats to be deployed each year to replace the ones that fail. The European ‘fair share’ of this is about 250 units.

b. encourage the deployment of and collection of near real time data from automated observing systems such as XBTs, Ferry-box & CPR on research vessels and Ships of Opportunity.

c. encourage Member States to continue to make marine observations that are useful for national purposes and, if shared in near real-time, would help sustain the MCS and downstream services. Specific examples include data from the tide gauge network and moorings.

d. promote investment is needed in carefully chosen well equipped observatories at locations where data would provide valuable constraints on models.

5.3.6 Data collection, assembly and quality controlAppendix 4 also discusses the requirements for the data processing & management system needed to sustain the MCS. Figure 2 outlines the functions which are needed by the MCS. The design proposed by MERS EAMyOcean to fulfil the functions listed in paragraph 2.4 (a)-(c), based on the use of Thematic Assembly Centres (TAC), is similar to WMO’s Data Collection and Processing Centres (DCPC), and is r ecomm ended for opera tional use for the r easons s et out i n

28 A cco rding to it s Mandat e (espec iall y Art 3, Co uncil Regulat ion (EEC) No 1210/90 of 7 M ay 1990 ) E EA play s a key ro le in t he Euro pean in -sit u mo nitoring co mmunity. In July 2004 EEA out line d it s v iew of the o bject iv es and ro le of in-situ mo nitoring wit hin GME S ( G AC (2 004 )6 ), f o llowed by a first progress repo rt on the dev elo pme nt o f the GME S in -situ mo nito ring co mpo nent in Nov ember 2004 (GAC(2004)21

29 For instance, EUMETNET (the European network of meteorological services) for meteorological insitu observation systems and services; EUROGOOS (the European Association for the Global Observing System); EUROGEOGRAPHICS (the European association of National Mapping and Cadastral Agencies) and Eurogeosurveys (the European Association of Geological Surveys) for cartography, geology, mapping and reference data; and EMODNET (the European Marine Observation and Data Network) for marine data or other bodies under the umbrella of the EU Integrated Maritime Policy.


para graph 4. 3.2. The respo nsibl e C entres must hav e or might reas onably achiev e op erational s tatus. E xcep t for the o il s pil l detec tion and characteris ation C entre, al lalso to EMODnet. Al l are required to generate and make available the appropriate QC dataset at levels 1b or 2 for analysis and assimilation by ocean models.Figure 5Figure 6 illustrates how the TACs are conceived within ME RSE AMyOCean as the gateways through which observational data reach the rest of the MCS activities. Because of the diversity of different sources from which observational data are acquired, including different sensor types that sample the same ocean product in different ways, the TACs are needed to harmonise the data in such a way as to facilitate their ingestion and assimilation into ocean forecasting models, and where appr op riate to blend the data into analysis products for application by downstream users.The TACs will perform the following generic functions

a. Real-time additional processing of level 2 data products received from European sensors, if necessary, to generate a common data format and product standard, facilitating an interoperable, harmonised data distribution system within the MCS.

b. Provide access to the metadata, and where possible the data, of the raw data on which the measurements are based.

c. Near-real-time level 3/4 processing activities, generating analysis products that correspond to the best estimate of an ocean property, blending data from various sources.

d. Providing ready access to all data products using a spectrum of delivery methods to users using common standards, including real-time high volume data flow to the M/A centres and other operational users, solutions tailored to individual downstream services and web access for general public users.

e. Provide confidence levels to the raw data and data products, including precision and accuracy where appropriate.

f. Delayed mode level 3/4 processing activities, including the updating of ancillary data as they become available within a few days of acquisition, as well as later reanalyses to produce higher quality products for climate monitoring.

g. Quality control, validation and error characterization, applying to the products and forecasts produced within the TAC. This activity needs to be underpinned by in situ observations. This does not remove the requirement for the space agencies to validate their basic level 2 products.

h. Interfacing with international activities for the same type of data, and with TACs for other data types including in situ data for validation.

i. Providing effective feedback on data products between users and the observing systems.

A num ber of c ol la bora tive m ulti -m iss ion proc essi ng a nd dis semina tion facil iti es a re a l rea dy i n plac e within Europe which per form the whole or par t of the TAC functions for Al tim etry, S ea S urface Temp era ture, Oc ean Col our, S ea I c e a nd Winds, a nd whic h a re alr ea dy interfac ed with d ifferent sa tell ite ground s egments. These repr esent a poi nt of depa rture a t lea st for the impl ementa tion of the MCS. They includ e:


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a. T he C NES/C LS SSALTO/DUAC S pro cess ing activ ity fo r sea surface to pograp hy.

b. The ESA DUE pro ject M eds piration and MERSEA, serv ing as the Eur opean component of the international GHRSST Pr oj ect, del iv ers a set o f harmo nis ed SST p rod ucts that are no w b eing used op erational ly by a stead ily growing us er bas e. I t has an ups tream interfac e with Eumets at’s Ocean & Sea I ce SAF and do wns tream

c. interfaces with oper ational us ers. d. Ocean Col our d ata hav e b een pr ov ided for MER SEA b y a co nsor tium l ed

by EC /JRC . Mer ged products are also being dev elop ed by the E SA DUE GlobC OLOUR project. Some c onsolid ation wil l be appr opr iate.

e. CE RSAT d el iv ers Sea Surface Winds and fl uxes (interfac es with Ocean & Sea Ice SAF).

f. Eumets at’s Ocean & Sea I ce SAF prov ides Sea Ice data fro m pas siv e radio metry o n an o per ational b asis .

An alternative would be for separate TACs to be set up for each sea-basin and in fact for the in-situ data of EMODnet the TACs often divide the work up on a sea-basin basin basis. However the word "Centre" in the TAC is a misnomer. It is in general a group of laboratories working together to produce products of a particular parameter in a uniform fashion. Although one should never say never, initial experience suggests that producing a consistent uniform product is best done within the framework of a single organisational structure covering all sea-basins which for convenience we shall call a TAC. In general the TACs assemble data that is collected regularly rather than on request. It is not clear whether the currently available:

a. Surface temperature b. Sea-level c. Sea-ice and wind d. Ocean colour (chlorophyll) e. In-situ

are the best set. It is evident that each of these data types has its own distinct user requirements and its processing system has achieved a different level of maturity. Thus although the TACs will serve the same generic functions (see the left hand side of figur e 2Figure 2), it is important to treat each ocean data product type individually. Fur ther c onsi dera tion is needed to defi ne the com prehensive requi rem ents for fulfil ling the TAC func tions for eac h ty pe of oc ean da ta produc t. I t a l so r ema ins to be d ec id ed whether Regiona l TACs are requi red or whether regional da ta can It has been suggested that a TAC be pr ovided sa tis fa c torily by a gl obal TAC. In the future, it may be appr opr iate to cons ider dev eloping a TAC developed for the processing of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) in which all SAR data over European waters are would be analysed to extract their information content concerning surface winds, wave spectra, oil pollution, ship detection, sea ice and other ocean phenomena. This co ul d ev olv e fro m bo th geograp hicall y l imited sea ice anal ysis , and the serv ice currently being dev el oped by EM SA fo r r outine monito ring of E urop ean SAR data to detect o il sp ill s at s ea. Oil s pill d etection and characterisation based on SAR data is being carried o ut by a co mbinatio n o f KSAT (Nor way), Boost


T echnologies (France) and Tel esp azio (Ital y) within the MarCoas t pr oject.However this is still premature. It would be rather a labour-intensive and therefore expensive operation. Technology is not yet ripe for automatic image processing to extract these features All the TACs deal with earth observation with the obvious exception of the in-situ TAC which will assemble data from various sources. In the period 2011-2013 some of these data will be provided by the ur-EMODNET project for physical data for which a call for tender was issued in the first half of 2010. These data include:

a. wave height and period; b. temperature of the water column; c. wind speed and direction; d. salinity of the water column; e. horizontal velocity of the water column; f. light attenuation; g. sea level.

EuroArgo will also feed information through this TAC. Regarding services tailored to the Arctic (see section 6.2) several new regular sea ice products need to be produced from wide swath SAR data such as: 1) sea ice deformation including drift, convergence, divergence and shear zones; 2) presence of leads and polynyas; 3) identification of fast ice zones; 4) deformed versus undeforrmed ice and ice- ocean discrimination using polarization ratio. Algorithms to produce these products already exist, and are being further developed by ESA’s GlobICE project. In due course, they should be implemented for operational use as part of the TAC function for sea ice.Depending on the success of the ESA SMOS mission in measuring ocean salinity, there may be a need to develop a TAC for Sea Surface Salinity from 2010.

5.3.6.1 For proc essing in situ data: The Coriolis centr e in Franc e is p rov id ing the necess ary functio nal ity for glob al and so me regional data within ME RSEA The TAC functions to meet regional requirements remain to be determined but the tasks are being carried out to some extent by the OOS/N (NOOS, BOOS, MOON, …) and exchange of the resulting data sets has been demonstrated in the SEPRISE project.

5.3.6.2 For atmospheric forcing data:ECMWF and several NMSs are capable of carrying out this function and do provide the required information routinely within MERSEA. Where coupled ocean– atmosphere models are being run operationally, two way coupling is possible.

5.3.7 Ocean modelling and data assimilationThere are a relatively small number of global and regional ocean models capable of assimilating data and being run operationally in Europe and which could contribute to the M C S . The MER SEA IP Mod ell ing TE Ps are highl ighted. C and idates known to beM arine Core ServiceThey are summarised here:


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Table 3 Models capable of meeting needs of marine core serviceDomain model Operated

by Horizontal Resolution

MyOcean

Global ocean PSY3V1 Mercator 15' (5' in Atlantic) yes FOAM UK Met Office

Arctic TOPAZ NERSC/Met Norway 7½' yes

Atlantic- European North West Shelf POLCOMS UK Met Office 6' Yes

FOAM UK Met Office PSY2V2 Mercator

Atlantic-Iberian-Biscay Irish-Ocean POLCOMS 5' yes

Baltic DMI-BSHCmod DMI ½-3 nautical miles yes

BALECO FIMR HIROMB SMHI

Black Sea 3⅔' (longitude) 2⅔' (longitude) yes

Mediterranean OPA9.0, NEMO v2 INGV 3¾' yes

The main models available are: Glo bal models, at v arious resol utions: PSY3V1 o perated by Merca tor FOAM operated by UK Met Offic e Forfor the Arctic / North Atl antic Oceans :core service are summarised in Table 3

i. TOP AZ operated by NERS C/Met N or wa y b. For the Baltic:

i. BALEC O op erated by FIMR ii. HIROM B o p erated by SM HI iii. BSHCmo d oper ated by DMI +

b oth o f which r eq uire bound ary c ond itions fro m the Nor th West Shel f Area and therefo re prov ide output in this do main too.

c. For the North Wes t Shel f / North E ast Atlantic : i. POLCOMS & FOAM res pectiv el y oper ated b y the UK Met Offic e ii. PSY2V2 o perated by Merc ator

d. For the Mediter ranean: i. The M editer ranean For ecas ting Sys tem oper ated by IN GV

In addition, there are many examples of smaller domain models being operated for local, national purposes taking boundary conditions from the above and delivering specialised products, e.g. surges, ice, oil and S&R drift, eutrophication, etc.


Ther e is substantial model dev el opment within MER SEA to: Within MyOCean's predecessor, MERSEA, there was considerable modelling effort to

a. develop a new modelling framework – the NEMO code b. improve multivariate data assimilation methods c. increase model resolutiond. incorporate ecosystem modules

It is to be exp ected that this wil l del iv er new, mor e c apabl e gl obal and regional oc ean mod els. Gi ven the s ubs tantia l investment needed in c om puting resourc es a nd skill ed sta ff necess a ry to opera te, m aintai n a nd d evel op them, a nd the a greement r ea c hed between the p a rtners over the gl oba l a nd r egiona l resp onsibil iti es of the indi vidual c entres, i t wil l be wise to b ase the ini tial MCS, a t l east on the MERSEA assi gnm ents. However, i f there i s a possibility of providing choic e of mod el produc ts to the downstr eam ser vic e provid ers tha t opti on s houl d not be pr ecl uded, i. e. there s hould be no ‘closed s hop’. However , the s ervic es p rovid ed by the MCS c onsi st of m uc h m ore than m od el produc ts . Research continues to improve these models. The models used in MyOcean appear to be state-of-the art but there is no justification in choosing one model over another. It is not clear whether the choices made are for technical reasons or the result of horse-trading. In the future marine core service, there are considerable advantages to having different models available for the same region. Because all core service products should be delivered in the same format, there should be no overhead for users in switching from one model to another. Any supplier will need to commit to the supporting services outlined in section 2.43.6 "Marine Core Service Functionality" and described in more detail below.

5.3.8 Raw dataEach level of data processing requires the acceptance of assumptions and the loss of information. Users have consistently indicated that, as well as receiving data products and a quality assessment from the core service, they would appreciate being able to drill down and examine the raw data from which the products were derived. This was not an explicit requirement for the MyOCean project but should be for the next version of the Marine Core Servicel

5.3.9 Service generation, access, delivery and supportState of the art capabilities are being developed by ME RSEA for impl ementation in 2008.MyOCean. These aim to provide a portal for each domain, which comprises:

a. A discovery serviceb. A viewing servicec. A download service, which will need to include or be supported by the

facility for sustained, scheduled delivery of high volume datasets for intermediate users, who are themselves running continuous operations that need such a service.

Product descriptions are to be standardised and available in a homogenous catalogue.The MERS EAMyOcean consortium is committed to a number of supporting activities that guarantee a level of quality in service provision and that follow standards to be


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spelled out in Service Level Agreements. They are all crucial to the success of the MCS and are broadly compatible with the desired functional analysis of section 2.4. Others who might aspire to contribute to the MCS should expect to provide equivalent services and commit to the same Service Level Agreements.Five service lines are p ropos ed:

SL1 : production of marine core information and dataSL2 : dissemination of marine core productsSL3 : assessment and expertise on marine productsSL4 : ocean analysis tools development and maintenanceSL5 : training and research coordination

5.3.9.1 SL1 ProductionOperators will need to develop and produce quality controlled fields (analyses & forecasts) describing the global ocean & European seas, based on space and in situ observations data and their assimilation into appropriate ocean models. This activity includes different product lines:Observation and model products for the state variables listed in Table A2. 1 for example in several modes: nowcasting, forecasting (several days), and re-analysis (up to some decades)The latter requires both real-time operational lines and delayed mode data lines.

5.3.9.2 SL2 DisseminationAll operators must provide to users the advertised information on the ocean state, either through their own production (SL1) or by being a reference access point to other production from centres that are not part of the MCSMO (MCS Management Organisation) – see section 5.1. This will include the appropriate tools for search and discovery, viewing, downloading of products. The download service will need to include or be supported by the facility for sustained, scheduled delivery of high volume datasets for intermediate users, who are themselves running continuous operations that need such a service.

Catalogues and inventories of products must be homogenous, readily accessible, searchable, and updated regularly.The dissemination will be subject to the data policy to be agreed upon, but hopefully as set out in section 4.4.

The p rop os ed ass ignment of resp ons ib il ity for the p or tals that will car ry these tools is that cho sen by the MERSE A co nsor tium and ill ustrated in figure 6. Information products accessible through each portal should relate to the domain in question, meet the standards described in section 4.3.85.3.10 "Standards" and other service qualities set out below, including guidance in their use. The aim will be to give the easiest possible access to information and, where it exists, choice to the user.


Figure 8

5.3.9.3 .SL3 Assessment and expertiseAll production of the MCS must be fully validated, with known accuracy and error estimates. MCS must provide expertise on the marine core products, to support efficient use of its output or bring directly information to interested users. Human expertise is added to the production and dissemination functions, to proceed from data to information for the benefit of users.Access to information from forecasts produced by different Centres is a powerful tool for assessment of their reliability and accuracy; it is desirable that the MFC should enable such multi-model interpretation and presentation. For instance, regular bulletins and assessment reports can be published to e x p lain the main features of some of the products; expert analysis can give a thematic interpretation of the marine core products; specific post-processing, on demand, to extract subsets of products; or to elaborate summary indicators based on MCS data (selection and transformation).The expertise service could include the elaboration of calculated fields derived from the state variables (e.g. mixed layer depth, upwelling indices, transports, heat content), anomalies, climatologies or statistics.


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In cooperation with expert topic centres, contribution to reference reports on the ocean state (Regional Conventions, EEA, ICES, etc); or simple and systematic studies of observing networks (Argo, altimetry, etc), or for operational user agencies.

5.3.9.4 SL4 Ocean analysis tools, development and maintenanceThe MCS should develop and maintain, for the benefit of the European community of intermediate users and other operators, a suite of reference codes and frequently-needed tools required to use MCS products and to develop downstream activities and services. It is mandatory that the codes be maintained at the forefront of the state of the art and be fully validated; with error estimates. This requires expertise in the transfer of research results into the operational suites.The capabilities required to sustain and improve the MCS also need to be developed, validated, upgraded, maintained and disseminated at European level. These include tools such as the NEMO Ocean modelling code; data assimilation tools; toolboxes for nesting, downscaling, and interfacing models; validation algorithms (metrics, observations /model, …); data handling codes, visualisation, diagnostics routines.

5.3.9.5 SL5 Training, research, and outreach coordinationThe MCS will actively develop and promote scientific and educational programs for the benefit of operational oceanography as a contribution to the development of European capacity in the subject.An active research community must be entrained in disciplines and fields of research of relevance to operational oceanography. MCS can play a leading role in research networking and connection with research teams in Europe, and beyond; it can promote coordination of research initiatives linked to operational oceanography, and it must contribute to capacity building and outreach.Training can be provided through summer schools, conferences, or students courses on operational oceanography; traineeships, PhD and post-docs program can be associated with the MCS Centres. Benchmarking against in-situ measurements and between different models can help to identify areas for improvement.These research programmes will be of two types:

One must be closely coupled to the MCS to ensure that projects are driven, in part at least by the specific needs of the operators, and remain aware of emerging research results. There is no doubt that progress in ocean modelling, monitoring and prediction will be achieved only if such programmes are effectively pursued, coordinated and funded. Experience from other successful providers of services of the kind to be offered by the MCS suggests that a fraction of the turnover of the endeavour (of the order of 5-10%) should be set aside for such closely coupled research; such examples include the major NMSs and ECMWF.The other will be driven by the need to resolve priority issues in the relevant sciences (as identified by the ESF Marine Board for example) and to explore new technologies for monitoring the marine environment, using EO and in situ methods. These are likely to be funded within national research programmes, the Framework Programmes, by ESA through their Explorer missions and industry.


GMES and GEOSS share a range of strategic and technical issues and offer opportunities for interactions (e.g. space and non-space observation platforms, data exchanges and network connections, tasking and integration of observations, ad-hoc campaigns). At the European level, the two initiatives are closely related in that:

As it develops itself, GMES will become, with the data it can generate, a main European contribution to the GEOSS.GMES will benefit from the observations collected and exchanged in the frame of the international GEOSS activities.

European GEO consultation meetings are regularly organised and chaired by the Research DG to coordinate the position of all European GEO members supported by the Framework Programme in order to ensure a strong European voice and influence on decision making at the GEO plenary meetings. This includes ensuring appropriate European representation in the GEO Executive committee and providing the European share of funding of the GEO secretariat out of the EU Framework Programme.It will be important that the MCS plays its part in ensuring that this ‘European voice’ is well informed by the benefits which the marine sector can gain from and contribute to the GEOSS.

5.3.10 StandardsOne of the objectives of the MCS is to provide consistent quality and standard of service. This puts strong requirements in terms of robustness of the products and delivery channels; timeliness of production and delivery; fitness for purpose against specific requirements; stability and homogeneity of re-analyses; traceability and quality performance. Users of MCS serviced must not need bespoke interfaces to access and use its products. GMES as a whole has to deliver interoperability between its components, so conformity to the expected INSPIRE Directive will be mandatory.In order to achieve this goal, the MCS delivery of data and data products should conform to International Open standards as will be promoted within the INSPIRE program. In particular the viewing services should conform to Open GIS standards, providing Web Feature Services (WFS) for in situ data and Web Map Services (WMS) to allow viewing of geospatial gridded data. These can be live services working directly upon the data repositories. These viewing services should be available (with appropriate security) at all MCS service centres to allow the overlaying within a web portal of MCS geospatial view products with each other and with third party GIS based products without the exchange of the data themselves. For data exchange the MCS should eventually conform to the Web Coverage Service (WCS) standards although interim methods such as secure ftp or OPeNDAP are envisaged.The MCS should provide sufficient underpinning support for the development of appropriate viewing services to allow MCS information to be viewed within any downstream GIS based services conforming to the Open Standards. This could include commissioning of specific viewing services appropriate to the marine domain. As a Fast Track Service the MCS should be resourced to take the lead in this area which will (1) greatly increase the visibility and availability of MCS products in a highly professional way, (2) provide easy to use calibration/validation services for use within the consortium, e.g. by overlaying MCS products with satellite images, (3) provide a lead for future European geospatial services. The MCS should also seek to develop partnerships with other geospatial information services around Europe. A directory of all Geospatial


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information services in OGC format should be available with a portal to combine and overlay them. This would go a long way towards providing an integrated view of the European Environment as outlined in the INSPIRE initiative.Standards to be applied will be specified or referenced in Service Level Agreements (SLA), and / or Service Charter for overall MCS consistency, which must cover the points above, as well as requirements to maintain the system at state of the art; to use all available information; to perform multi-model estimation and forecasts; to engage in research and development (see SL4 and SL5 above); specification of the areas of service provision ; the rules for access to infrastructure; consideration of the operational status, security, system monitoring, etc…

5.4 Fun ding & Data PolicyCommission Communications on GMESError: Reference source not found indicate that the services are of public interest but do not explicitly refer to them being a public good. In economics a public good is a good that is non-rivalrous and non-excludable. Non-rivalry means that consumption of the good by one individual does not reduce availability of the good for consumption by others; and non-excludability that no one can be effectively excluded from using the good. If GMES services are to be a public-good then it almost certainly implies that they should be free at point of consumption; otherwise some operators would be excluded from them. The marine core service implementation group believe that the marine core service should indeed become a public good. If they are not then the objectives set out in the GMES impact assessments30 , particularly creation of a sustainable information infrastructure tailored to the needs of users and the stimulation of a downstream service, will not happen. It is the downstream products, not the core service itself, that support environmental and security policies. Experience suggests that if the core service products are not free there will be no downstream services. It has been suggested by some that core service products should be only available for GMES purposes. However the only benefit of such a restriction would be to the lawyers who would be kept busy in defining what GMES purposes are. Core should be available without restriction. However we also need to consider the data that are used to create the core service products. These are usually termed the background data as opposed to the marine core service products themselves which are the foreground products. Many users will want access to these data partly to understand better the core service products and partly because they may wish to create services that derive directly from the raw data and do not use the core service products; possibly even to provide alternative or complementary core service products. We can distinguish several cases: Table 4 Proposed data policy for background data for GMES marine core serviceData provided through the GMES budget – eg from the space component.

These data should be free of charge and free of restriction of use

30 Commission Staff Working Document accompanying the Proposal for a Regulation Of The European Parliament And Of The Council on the European Earth observation programme (GMES) and its initial operations (2011 – 2013) Impact Assessment And Ex Ante Evaluation SEC(2009) 639


Data owned by one of the consortium partners.

Free access to these data should be a condition for the partner to join the consortium

Data provided by a publicly-owned Member State body that is not a consortium partner

It is an ambition of the EU that publicly produced data should be free of charge. However this is a recommendation rather than a binding commitment. We live in the real world. If not using these data would result in an inferior product and there is no other way to obtain these data then some restrictions can be accepted.

Data provided from a privately-owned body

Where possible these should be acquired on terms that allow maximum possible access and re-use

5.5 Funding

5.5.1 Marine core serviceIf we accept that the data products provided by the marine core service should be publicly funded it follows that the marine core service should be publicly funded. A private organisation dedicated to the pursuit of profits is not going to fund an activity that brings in no revenue stream. At present there are abstract estimates31 of the full costs of a reliable, efficient MC Smarine core service or of the upstream and downstream capabilities that are required to deliver value from it. Such estimates need to be detailed during the next year or so as experience grows during the FP7 funded demonstration phase; not least to ensure that the case for long term funding is robust. The level of national funding compared to European needs to be settled.In the inter im, it is assu med that, becau se the servic es being delivered by the MCS ar e p ubl ic goods they w ill be c o- fu nded by th e EU and Member States, not at the po int of del ivery b y c harg es l ev ied o n intermed iate us ers . T his is the model ad op ted for the dev el op ment and demons tration phas e of the GMES Fast Track MC S funded through the FP7For the core service there is a question as to how much can be covered by national funding and how much should be covered from the EU budget. Spac e P rogr amme. C ontinued adoption of this model has to be v erified , probabl y within the context of the pr oposed INSPI RE initiative. The s cal e o f the expend iture r equir ed sugges ts that so me for m o f c ost sharing by Member States and the EU wo ul d be agreed to d el iv er the s erv ice defined ultimatel y in the SLA(s ) b etween the GME S Management Authority and the MC SMO or oper ators. I n effec t this is the c urrent fund ing model of the sp ace infrastr ucture with ESA too. P resumably some Memb er States contr ibutio ns would be in- kind, in the fo rm o f national s uppor t for the oper ators and data coll ectio n/prov is ion (b oth EO and in situ ). On this basis, it is fur ther assumed that upstream data and MCS data, pr oduc ts and servic es made availabl e to inter mediate u sers w il l be fr ee of charg e, excep t for the cost of delivery, if they ar e used exclusively for GMES purposes. It is ex p ected that intermed iate us ers wil l b e There are various reasons why the EU needs to provide some of the funding; chief among them being that the architecture described above is impossible to set-up without a collaboration between the countries whose waters are being observed and for whose waters the service is

31 Need to reference presentation by Bahurel at implementation group meeting


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intended to cover. Again it is clear that without a EU financial contribution there will be no marine core service. This is not a recommendation from the implementation group. Neither is it a hypothesis. It is a fact. It is also clear that the EU is not going to pay for the total cost of the service. However the question as to what should be paid by national governments and what should be paid by the EU is a general GMES question and beyond the scope of the marine core service implementation group.

5.5.2 Downstream ServicesThese arguments do not apply for downstream services which wil l b e market-driven and financed through user charges in effect for the value that they add to the information and services that they obtain from the MC Smarine core services and other upstream service providers. Some ancillar y data may fall within the scope o f the INSPI RE Directiv e others wil l be av ailable on terms spec ified by their s uppl iers Some of these user-charges may be paid through the EU. For instance should the oil-spill monitoring service provided by the European Maritime Safety Agency, EMSA, become a downstream service32 , then it will benefit from EU financing. However this will not be financed from a general GMES pot but rather a budget dedicated to environmental protection where earth-observation based services will be used if the benefits justify the cost.There is no doubt that some EU level support will be desirable for intermediate service providers during the MCSmarine core service demonstration phase at least. This has been done within FP7 Space Theme in two consequitive calls. Such suppo rt is still also being p rov ided by the ESA GSEs, in particul ar Mar Coast and Polar View, and thro ugh the d ata purc hase activ ities o f E MSA. T he ESA managed, EC fund ed d ata-buy pl anned within FP7 wil l be cr ucial in this regard too Some thought needs to be given to how this should be organised. In the past many of the projects from both the Framework Programme and the European Space Agency started from the hypothesis that the only barrier to a successful and sustainable downstream service was lack of knowledge amongst the user community of the great benefits that earth observation could bring them. All what was needed was a project to demonstrate these services to users. However there are several flaws to this hypothesis.

c. In some cases the product provided by the downstream services was not of sufficient quality to satisfy the needs of the user either because of inherent limitations in earth observation or because further research was needed to improve the product. With an emphasis on demonstration and capacity building, there was no effort left for improving the product. In some cases products were provided that competed with existing commercial services. Because these products were provided free to users, there was an expectation that these services would always be free. This lowered the probability that profitable added-value services would be developed.

d. Images still make up a substantial part of the cost of the services. In some cases the product could be useful to the end-user provided it was free but not if the images used to develop the product were provided at commercial rates. Back of envelope calculations could show that these services could never become sustainable without subsidised images. Where these images come from European public organisations the policy of providing images at reduced rates to research projects but not to

32 It is not at the moment because it does not use any products from the marine core service


commercial services needs rethinking. An example is vessel detection from SAR imagery.

e. In other cases the market segment is not large enough to support the large number of providers that were encouraged to enter projects for the demonstration services. Oil-spill monitoring in European waters is an example. The total market for Europe may be about €2-3 million per year. There is probably room for about three or four providers to run profitable operations.

f. Funding has largely been granted to projects aiming at public authorities. The market is relatively limited. Thought needs to be given to expansion to services aimed at the research community or the private sector.


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6 Governance and related issues

6.1 EU procurementThere are a number of issues to be resolved that transcend the strictly scientific and technical matters which guide the infrastructure design and implementation. Some considerations, particularly those of top-down governance, will be settled at a political level, for all of the GMES Fast Tracks and follow-on initiatives jointly, presumably in the GMES Bureau and GMES Advisory Council .Partnership. However it is reasonable to suppose that the structure and day to day governance of the MCS can and will be designed according to some general principles.

6.2 Ac counta bilit y & Management struc tures

6.2.1 Procurement or GrantIf the EU is to partially fund the marine core service, and we have indicated that there will be no marine core service if it does not, then it must do so within the EU’s financial regulations. It can do this in two ways:

a. through procurement – essentially the EU issues a set of specifications and buys the service on behalf of the users. Payment is against deliverables

b. through a grant – the EU provides financial support to an ongoing concern. Payment is of costs incurred.

In either case the funding must follow a competitive process through calls for tender or calls for proposals. Only if there is a monopoly provider is an exception allowed. This might be the case for part of the space segment of GMES but is not for the marine core service. In theory there are several providers that could contribute. Up to now, it has been assumed that the core service would be funded through a grant procedure but this needs to be carefully considered. Procurements are a more natural procedure for services requiring user-defined deliverables and probably result in less administrative expenses; both for the authority providing the services and the provider.

6.2.2 Direct or devolved managementIt is envisaged that the MC Smarine core service will be distributed and co mpr ise. It will consist of a number (of order 1015 as discussed in section 2.3) of operatorsmonitoring and forecasting centres and thematic assembly centres that will produce and offer products and services, as characterized in appendix 2 and section 4, to intermediate users. Some such operators are likely to be consortia. Other o perator s wil l be r espo nsibl e for the Thematic Assembly C entres d escribed abov e. Other ac tors wil l exis t in the for m o f exter nal Beneath this layer will be data providers, such as ESA and EUMETSAT for Earth Observations and agencies in Member States for in situ data, acting singly or as the consortia which comprise the Operational Ocean Systems/Networks of EuroGOOS. If the EEA assumes greater responsibility for oversight of in situ data collection for GMES generally, it may act in loco parentis for such agencies and consortia. These upstream data providers are not the concern of this section which is purely concerned with the marine core service.


Two broad classes of solution can be envisaged to manage the interfaces between these providers and the expected GMES Management Authority described in GAC(2006)6. The GMES Management Authority itself could manage all of the interfaces with all of the actors. Logically it would need to do so for all the Fast Tracks and their follow-ons, which would be a complex business requiring a detailed knowledge of very diverse technical operations. or whatever body is in common by the MCS operators, an MCS Management Organisation (MCSMO) could be formed. This would need to have a legal personality. Looking inw Direct management option

The GMES Management Authority itself could manage all of the interfaces with the monitoring and forecasting centres and with the thematic assembly centres Logically it would need to do so for all the Fast Tracks and their follow-ups. If we assume that each fast-track or core service has a similar number of “nodes” to the marine core service and if, in addition, the management authority would manage the space component, this would require a large amount of effort. T

Devolved management option

Alternatively the Management Authority could issue one contract or grant agreement for the whole of the core service. In this case the Management Authority would have less control of how the contractor managed its internal affairs but would limit its complexity by giving it fewer interfaces to deal with.

a. The external data providers (ESA, EUMETSAT, in situ consortia, EEA etc.) would probably have SLAs with the GMES Management Authority, but the alternative of making them with the MCSMO is for consideration. Looking outwards, such an Authority would represent the MCScontractor or grant recipient in its interaction with the GMES Management Authority with respect to the ‘General Management’ Function described in GAC(2006)6. An MCSMO would be better able to exercise the Technical Management function described in that document than would a GMES-wide Authority, simply because the user demand, technical solutions, actual performance, research needs and qualification processes are likely tothe devolved management option could be specific to the marine domain at least. Of course in this model the MCSMO would be accountable to the GMES Authority for all the functions for which it was responsible.

b. In the v ery s hor t term, i. e. in r espo nding to opportunities to d emons trate and dev el op the MC S within FP7, s uch a Management Organis ation might be created and op erated by a lead par tner and co mpris e an executiv e compos ed of repr esentativ es of a consortium of op erators. Howev er, in the longer term, there woul d b e so me merit in cr eating a sep arate entity with its o wn l egal id entity. organisations as at present. However administratively the organisations might find it more convenient to create a new “management organisation” with a legal personality. In this case the forecasting and thematic assembly centres would be subcontractors. It is not clear whether this would result in any benefits for the management authority. In the case of a procurement it would make little difference because the financial and technical capacity of “significant subcontractors” would still need to be checked. In the case of a grant, probably the amount spent on


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subcontractors would need to be audited but not a breakdown of the subcontractors’ spending. So there could be a saving.

In any case it is clear that the complex, time-consuming procedure followed in negotiating an agreement with the MyOcean consortium to deliver a service that was almost identical to one provided by the predecessor MERSEA should not be repeated.

6.3 Consortium StructureThe MyOcean consortium is essentially the same as the predecessor MERSEA consortium and it is assumed that they would see themselves as prime contenders for the next version of the marine core service. However it cannot be excluded that another consortium could bid. It is not really the business of the Implementation Group to determine what internal arrangement the consortium uses. However a European Economic Interest Group (EEIG) has some characteristics which would make it an attractive company structure. The EEIG, i.e. European Economic Interest Grouping is a company structure which can be registered in all European Union Member States according to EC Law (Regulation (EEC) 2137/85). The EEIG offers the possibility of cross-border cooperation and collaboration within Europe especially to small and middle-sized enterprises of every legal category including associations and local authorities. A precondition is however that at least two of the enterprises or other bodies of the grouping are located in at least two different EU Member States; enterprises from Member States of the European Economic Area can also take part. To date approximately 1200 EEIG have been registered in the EU with altogether about ten thousand members.As a result of the growing demands on companies within the field of cross-border transactions, the EEIG is an attractive alternative for co-operation in various economical fields; examples are the establishment of a purchasing and marketing association, joint research and development or co-operation in fields of personnel and training. In addition an EEIG may have significant tax advantages (an EEIG is not submitted to corporate taxation etc.).These include the following:

a. it is a legal framework which aims to develop and facilitate the collaboration between entrepreneurs and can represent a profit centre for its members of its own;

b. it is a very flexible and unnon-bureaucratic legal instrument, whose rules can be decided by the members in observance of a few guidelines fixed in the European regulation;

c. a grouping can be founded with or without assets, investment or know-how transfer;

d. a grouping can be established by subjects with a different legal status: self- employed persons, private limited company, chambers of commerce etc.;

e. the members of a grouping go on carrying out their own activities autonomously. They maintain the activities they ran before and besides obtain new business opportunities;

f. a grouping can guarantee a high-level liability: members have unlimited and several liability for its debts;


g. profits and losses resulting from its activities are taxable only in the hands of the members; profits must be divided up among the members, if not reinvested;

h. a grouping pays neither company taxes nor taxes on earnings;i. a grouping can run its own business and can have a trade mark;j. the official address of a grouping can be easily transferred within the

Community. Other legal instruments require a previous winding up of the enterprise, which involves costs, activities and loss of corporate image;

k. due to the European regulation no. 2137/85 constituting the legal basis of EEIG and, being drafted in each European official language, there is no discrimination because of the use of a foreign language.

6.4 Interactions with in termedia te u sersdownstream servicesDay to day interactions between product and service providers and their users should be conducted directly. Proposals for cataloguing and searching for data, products and services are made in the Strategic Implementation Plan. Howev er there wil l be a need for intermed iate user s to inter act with the op erato rs and MC SM O (o r GME S M anagement Author ity as app rop riate, d ep end ing o n the ad op ted management mod el ) to deter mine , at a mo re s trategic l ev el , the scop e and c haracter istics of s erv ices to b e offered , any changes to them and agree pr iorities and an as sociated R&D pr ogr amme. Some fo rm of MCS However the GMES Management Authority needs to understand how well the core service meets the needs of downstream users so that they can adjust the requirements of the grant or procurement procedure for subsequent years. The Marine Knowledge Communication proposes setting up sea-basin checkpoints that allow stakeholders to comment on the effectiveness of thematic assembly centres – not only for GMES but also for the data collection regulation in fisheries and the European Marine Observation and Data Network. These will gather stakeholders – both downstream providers and end-users - who should provide feedback on what has been provided and proposals for future priorities. Conclusions from these checkpoints should feed into the overall GMES process. The previous version of this implementation report suggests a marine core service Commissioning Forum, meeting at least annually, could p rovid e a s uitabl e body fo r this. It seems l ikely that there wil l be a wide range o f intermed iate user s. So me means of br igading!! commo n interes ts will be helpful and pro bably necessary , p erhaps through inv olv ement of as soc iations in the For um, rather than indiv idual or ganisatio nsfulfil these requirements.

6.5 Criteria for selecting operators and modification of the partnership

The services will be provided by operators (i.e. institutes, agencies, companies, or consortia) that manage and operate functional centres. They should be selected on the basis of their ability to fulfil the requirements of a legally binding contract, their access to the required resources, their expertise (scientific and technical), their operational status, track record and previous performance, commitment to work with the interfaces, and cost-effectiveness. Regional knowledge and ownership will clearly be important. As wel l as s ound rep artition o f For the wor k b etween Memb er States


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The devolved management option the composition of the MC S s houl d b e rev iewed period ical ly to all owpartnership, including subcontractors, is largely a matter for mod ifications of the p artners hip ( incl usio n o f new memb ers or severance). Sev eral el ements could b e co nsider ed in suc h rev iews, e. g. the (duly weighted) national resourc es c ommitted to the sy stem, the rel ative p erfor mance and str engths of p otential op erator s, national policies , need s for new serv ices , and their ab il ity to prov id e fully op erational and sus tainabl e serv icesconsortium itself. Should the service be obtained through a procurement procedure then the technical capacity will be judged as part of the selection process. According to the financial regulation this is a yes/no process. ie all potential bidders meeting the criteria will go forward to the award criteria. In a grant procedure the quality of the partnership could be an award criterion .A l ev el o f co mpetitio n in some aspects of the pr oces s chain will be app rop riate to cr eate incentiv es to innov ate and improv e p erfor mance. For this pur pos e there wil l be a need to enco urage a meas ure o f functio nal d upl icatio n. Howev er, this will need to b e b al anced against the imp erativ e to c reate critical mass in a rel ativel y few centres and the difficul ty of dupl icating major investments . Al though the major modell ing centres that ar e l ikel y to fo rm the MC S and most o f the cur rentl y cap abl e thematic data as sembly centres are p ubl ic o rganisatio ns – b ecaus e it is they who hav e mad e the necess ary inv es tments – there is ev ery reas on to s up pos e that the cap abil ities r equir ed by them and th e o ther up and downs tream s erv ices will b e s up pl ied by the pr iv ate sec tor. So me are l ikely to be pr ov ided and oper ated under contract by the pr iv ate sec tor, par ticul arly o utsid e the mod ell ing and spec ialist data pr oc ess ing centres . In any case the main parameter to be considered will be the ability of the consortium to provide operational and sustainable services.There have been in the past some suggestions that there should be a sound repartition of work between Member States. Whilst some local knowledge will surely be useful for the monitoring and forecast centres, any formal repartition between Member States would break internal market public procurement rules and cannot be considered. Furthermore repartition of work along any other grounds than value for money would mean that the service would be even less user-driven than it already is.There have also been some suggestions to take into account national resources committed to the system. Again this would break public procurement rules. However those Member States that have invested in operational oceanography in the past and continue to do so ion the future will naturally be in a better bargaining position when joining consortia.

6.6 Conflicts of interestPotential MC S marine core service operators have their own downstream service activities and will wish to use the MC Smarine core service data and products in the l atter.them. This includes both public and private entities. This possibility raises issues of equity, particularly when they are in competition with other intermediate users/service providers who are not part of the MC Smarine core service.A p rio ri it seems p oss ibl e to addr ess this ques tion in the fr ame of the SLAs and the MC S and GME S gov ernance. T he SLAs will cl early id entify the tasks to be c arried out in the MC S and the res ources av ail abl e for this purpos e. T he MC S and GMES governanc es will need to cl arify the dec isio n making mechanisms for the MC S activ ities. I t might be specified , fo r exampl e, that teams inv olv ed in a MC S


op erational activ ity, o r in MCS d ev elop ment activ ities be c l earl y id entified, and per haps s eparated fr om teams involved in do wns tream and other serv ices . Of cours e this p roblem wo uld al so b e solv ed if MC S data and pr oduc ts were fr eel y av ail abl e to all engaged in serv ing GME S pur pos es, and MC S oper ators were full y funded. This problem will be solved if foreground and background data were made freely available as indicated in section 5.4 "Data Policy".


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7 Examples which test the suitability of the strategy in delivering specific end-to-end services in and beyond 2008

A significant effort is still required to elaborate and market downstream services. The data policy recommended in section should encourage this because the free access to basic data and MCS products will act as a considerable stimulus to the market. There is evidence for this in the subsidised provision of EO data and support for the ESA GSEs, which has encouraged and begun to satisfy downstream use. Furthermore, the well developed strong private meteorological service sector in the US is sustained by the same data policy and centralised provision of core (meteorological) services. There is every reason to expect similar strong innovation and growth in Europe in the marine sector.Even without that stimulus there are a number of clear requirements for end-to-end services now, as follows:

7.1 In support of (the assumed) implementation of the Marine Environmental Strategy Directive and other environmental protection policies.

Europe’s marine environment is faced with increasing and severe threats. They include climate change; pollution (including contamination by dangerous substances; from land- based sources; litter, microbiological; oil spills as a result of accidents as well as pollution from shipping and offshore oil and gas exploration; pollution from ship dismantling; and noise pollution); the impacts of commercial fishing; the introduction of non-native (exotic) species principally through discharge of ships’ ballast water; nutrient enrichment (eutrophication) and associated algal blooms; and illegal discharges of radionuclides.Against this background a new Marine Environmental Strategy and associated Directive is proposed33. It aims to promote sustainable use of the seas and to conserve marine ecosystems, by giving priority to achieving good environmental status in the Community’s marine environment, to continuing the protection and preservation of that environment, and to ensuring that subsequent deterioration is prevented. For this purpose Member States will be required to prepare Marine Strategies which, while being specific to their own waters, reflects the overall perspective of the appropriate Marine Region3414. For this purpose they will be required initially to carry out assessments of the current state of their marine waters. Subsequently they will need to establish environmental targets and monitoring programmes for ongoing assessment, enabling the state of the waters concerned to be evaluated on a regular basis. Then programmes of measures which are designed to achieve good environmental status will need to be established and implemented.

7.1.1 Service requirementsAssessments will be required to include physical and chemical features, habitat types, biological elements – at several trophic levels – the hydromorphology and

33 COM(2005)505 final

34 The Marine Regions are specified as the Baltic, North East Atlantic and Mediterranean, coinciding with the three of the regions of the MCS

Author, 01/03/-1,

Somebody from ENV should update this


any particular problems such as nutrient inputs and chemical hotspots. Analyses of pressures and social and economic issues are also required.Indicators will need to be developed and determined in order to establish where intervention is required and whether resulting measures are proving successful in delivering the aims of the Strategy & Directive. Many pressures are episodic and some arise from crises that create substantial pollution events. Services capable of informing policing and emergency responses will also be required.A recent EEA-led EMMA Workshop3515 concluded that operational oceanography in general, and the MCS in particular, can contribute to marine monitoring and assessments by:

a. Providing input to indicator development (especially the State and Impact components of the DPSIR assessment framework)

b. Identifying temporal variabilityc. Describing spatial variability & dynamicsd. Contributing to crisis management & episodic events that affect the

state of the marine environmente. Providing context for in-situ sampling & interpretation of their data.

As indicated in appendix 2, the primary contribution in the short term will be in the form of physical and a subset of the chemical and biological variables. Furthermore in the longer term it will be impossible to describe and understand biological and chemical characteristics unless the physical context is clear. In particular much effort could be wasted on measures if the major natural marine transport pathways and structures are not well described, and their role understood and accepted; allowing actions to be taken when and where they will be effective. Examples of this are to be found in the identification of regions where oxygen depletion is a natural consequence of a lack of mixing in shallow water (with associated productivity) rather than a signal of eutrophication. Similarly, phytoplankton growth is known to be concentrated along a thin boundary (the thermocline) at the base of warm summer waters in the northern North Sea where the favourable combination occurs of sunlight and a supply of nutrients from below. This has consequences for the development of Harmful Algal Blooms (HAB) and the formation of a reliable food source for organisms further up the food web. Dependencies of these kinds need to be understood and quantified if measures are to deliver what is expected of them.Although direct monitoring is limited to the sea surface, EO data provide a valuable source of timely information about water quality. Inferences about the development and extent of algal blooms and sediment loads can be made from ocean colour observations. Additional in situ sampling is required to identify the potential for and existence of HAB, nutrient concentrations and the presence of other pollutants. Managers and communities need forecasting systems that address where a harmful algal bloom is today and where it will be in the near future. This places a particular emphasis on near real time collection of such in situ data. The use of SAR data in oil spill detection is described in section 6.3.

7.1.2 Specific product requirementsReanalyses of EO and in situ observations over a number of years are required to establish mean physical and chemical states (including currents) in a GIS format, together with variations about the mean and for identification of trends.

35 Held at the EEA, Copenhagen, 23-24 October 2006


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Indicators and state data contributing to indicators. Analyses of meteorological and oceanographic conditions, to provide context to measurement campaigns and during environmental crises, such as those manifest as eutrophication, oil spills and algal blooms.Forecasts of the evolution of such crises to enable coordinated responses.

7.1.3 Observing system requirementsEO: Continuity of ocean colour measurements as described in section 3.4 of appendix 3.In situ: physical, chemical and phyto- and zooplankton variables to contribute to the above products using the technologies described in appendix 4.

7.1.4 Relevant current coordinating organisationsEEA and its partners in the European Environment Information and Observation Network. The Regional Conventions: HELCOM, OSPAR, Barcelona; UNEP-MAP.IOC-SCOR Scientific Steering Committee for GEOHAB (Global Ecology and Oceanography ofHarmful Algal Blooms)

7.1.5 End-to-end servicesEO data in the form of measurements of sea surface height and temperature and in situ measurements of salinity, temperature and current profiles are required for assimilation by MCS models. In situ measurements of the bio-geochemical and biophysical variables listed in appendix 2 provide important contributions for the assessments and to validate the specific products listed above, which will be created by the MCS.The MCS will provide some indicators but intermediate users within the EEA’s Topic Centres are likely to use the MCS products to generate more. These products will also be used by intermediate users carrying out research to construct and validate the measures required to deliver good ecological status. Estimates of the transport across EEZ and territorial water boundaries will also be prepared to determine the extent to which pollutants are being exported and imported.

7.2 Ice Services

7.2.1 Context36

The Arctic Climate Impact Assessment report, which has been developed under the Arctic Council, shows that the global warming in the Arctic is dramatic with many significant consequences. There are enormous oil and gas fields, minerals, fisheries and other resources in the Arctic regions that will be increasingly important for Europe. The exploration and exploitation of the resources in these regions are severely hampered by harsh climate and in particular by the presence of sea ice. Sea traffic in the Baltic Sea is growing (731 M tons in 2003 is expected to grow into 1,148 M tons by 2020), especially oil transport from Russia via the new oil terminals in the Gulf of Finland (according to conservative estimates, 200-250 M tons by 2015). Marine operations including transportation by ships in the Northern Sea

36 based on a paper provided by Mr. Kimmo Kanto of the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation and material from references and the Polar View website


Route between Russia and Western Europe is increasing with associated risk for accidents and damage to the environment.Global climate change with many severe consequences is on the political agenda. The Arctic is of particular interest because the global warming is predicted to be the most pronounced in this region with many implications for sea transport, resource exploitation, construction, ecosystems, and the environment. The Arctic sea ice is predicted to be reduced by 80% during summer at the end of this century, while during winter the now seasonally ice-covered Barents Sea is expected to be ice-free. This will have a range of important potential bio-geophysical consequences and associated socio-economic impacts. The Arctic environment is very vulnerable and small disturbances can have very long- lasting impact. Environmental policies have defined a number of regulations with impact on all human activities in high latitudes.National ice services have been providing sea ice information for almost a hundred years. Ice charts and ice forecasts are the most important outputs today. A list of national ice services and their products with examples can be found at WMO No 574: Sea Ice Services in the World ( http : / / d miweb . d m i . d k/p u b /GDSIDB _ mirr o r/wm o _574/ c ontent . html )A joint North American Ice Service (NAIS) has been created between the National Ice Service (USA), Canadian Ice Service (Canada) and International Ice Patrol (USA), which in some years joins operations, budgets and manpower under a single system. Compared to Europe this new service cluster will have a powerful influence in all Arctic ice services.The ESA GSE Polar View offers integrated monitoring and forecasting services in the Polar Regions using satellite earth observation data to support improved decision-making, planning and adaptation to climate change. The intent is to deliver those services that address both the operational and scientific needs of stakeholder groups who are interested in issues related to sustainable economic development, marine safety, and the environment. The GSE includes over 30 different user groups.Current products include:

a. global and regional daily maps at medium resolution (3-6km) of ice extent and composition based on the US Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer (AMSR-E) and Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar Global Mode mosaics (~1km) from ENVISAT.

b. ice drift estimates at low resolution (30-60km) based on the sources above and scatterometer data.

c. an IPY portal designed and operated jointly by national ice services via the International Ice Charting Working Group (IICWG). The main purpose is to provide ice information in near real time to all research vessels engaged in the IPY

d. The Finnish Institute of Marine Research provides forecasts of ice motion, concentration, thickness, ridges and deformations for the Baltic Sea.

e. The Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute provides operational ice forecasts based on HIROMB (High-Resolution Operational Model for the Baltic).

The International Polar Year (IPY) is scheduled from March 2007 to March 2009. It has a number of objectives ( http://www.ipy.org/d e v elopment/ o b je c tiv e s .htm ), including to:

http://www.ipy.org/development/objectives.htm

http://dmiweb.dmi.dk/pub/GDSIDB_mirror/wmo_574/content.html


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a. Utilise the vantage point of the polar regions to carry out an intensive and internationally coordinated burst of high quality, important research activities and observations that would not otherwise occur

b. Lay the foundation for major scientific advances in knowledge and understanding of the nature and behaviour of the polar regions and their role in the functioning of the planet

c. Leave a legacy of observing sites, facilities and systems to support ongoing polar research and monitoring.

In particular an integrated Arctic Ocean Observing System (iAOOS) has been proposed3717, which if implemented will provide a very substantial resource capable of observing the Arctic Ocean from space to the sea bed. It will use satellites, surface ships, manned ice camps, autonomous ice-tethered platforms (ITP) and IABP/ICEX buoys, floats, moorings, gliders and AUVs. The DAMOCLES IP is providing a network of floats and gliders. Measurements from observatories at key locations are also planned for the subarctic seas – an approach which is recommended more generally in appendix 4. The aspiration to leave a post-IPY legacy, informed by findings from the major research programme has obvious potential to aid information service provision well beyond the experimental phase.The Antarctic is also an important region for European countries in terms of national importance, economic activity and global climate significance. Many European nations are signatories to the Antarctic Treaty, which has governed affairs on the continent since 1957, with European nations comprising approximately a third of the national signatories. This underlines the importance of the European regional presence in Antarctica and the responsibilities in leading internati onal affairs in the region. The economic importance of the Southern Ocean has also grown rapidly in recent years. In addition to the significant increase in tourist numbers to the continent, the Southern Ocean also includes important fisheries and shipping routes. With the Antarctic playing such an important role in the global climate system, the contribution of the scientific research activities into the Antarctic have international significance.

7.2.2 Service requirementsThere is a requirement for both better, more harmonised, monitoring and forecasting of ice evolution and movement. In particular, services and products at higher spatial resolution are needed (approaching a ship’s scale if possible) for marine transportation in ice and the offshore industry. In an era of climate change long running data sets are required to understand the changes that are taking place and to provide adequate guidance for the design of structures and operations in the Polar Regions.

7.2.3 Specific product requirementsHigh quality, reliable descriptions and forecasts of sea ice extent, type, thickness & movement on a daily basis for day to day operations plus long term datasets.

37 B Dickson, ‘The Integrated Ocean Observing System (iAOOS): an AOSB-CliC Observing plan for the International Polar Year’, Oceanologia, 48(1), 2006, pp 5-21.


7.2.4 Observing system requirementsEO: Continuity of visual/infrared, passive & active microwave & SAR data. –e.g. currently SSM/I, AMSR-E, SEAWINDS, RADARSAT and ENVISATIn situ – for characterization of composition – field expeditions and buoys – but the IPY legacy may provide other options

7.2.5 Relevant current coordinating organisations – Baltic Sea Ice Meeting, Expert Team on Sea Ice within JCOMM, EuroGOOS Arctic Task Team, International Ice Charting Working Group.

7.2.6 End-to-end servicesOn the assumption that the basic EO data streams to support ice monitoring will be guaranteed and Member States will provide access to relevant in situ data and atmospheric forcing data:The MCS will comprise in part a subset of existing national ice services and regional oceanographic organisations and be able to provide

a. suitable TACs for the required EO data (e.g. by developing and expanding the remit of existing centres);

b. integrated state of the art modelling using regional ocean models of the Arctic, Baltic and a global ocean model for the Antarctic, with ice physics and dynamics, taking atmospheric forcing from ECMWF & National Meteorological Service NWP;

c. the use of such models to create long period datasets for climate research and prediction;

d. short period services in the form of analyses and forecasts of ice concentration, ice thickness, ridged ice density & height, ice motion (direction and velocity) and likely areas of ice compression, in standard formats;

e. the evaluation of in situ observing systems and the case for their development, in particular for retaining in situ observing systems used during the IPY;

f. validation data on the quality of forecasts;g. advice/training on their use;h. boundary conditions for higher resolution, national modellingi. coordinated R&D to develop the services.

Downstream services will be able to provide:a. the robust, operational, bespoke ship routing and other integrated, high

resolution data and advisory services required by marine transport and offshore industries in the Arctic and Baltic

b. iceberg monitoring services

7.2.7 BenefitsThe above MCS services will enable intermediate users to offer specialised downstream services that will improve the safety, efficiency and effectiveness of marine transport and the offshore industry in polar waters, iceberg monitoring, datasets for climate change assessment, and decision support systems, etc.


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7.3 Oil spill monitoring

7.3.1 ContextThe Erika and Prestige disasters focused attention on the hazards associated with the transport of oil on which the successful functioning of the European economy depends. European oil imports total 27% of the world total trade in oil of which 90% is transported by sea. 70% of the EU oil imports are channelled along the Brittany coast while 30% of the global oil trade transits through the Mediterranean. This will increase as new terminals are brought on-stream for Caspian and Russian exports. As the economy expands, demand for oil increases generating higher levels of tanker traffic. This in turn creates an increased risk of oil tanker collision or grounding and well known consequences for the surrounding marine and coastal environment.However, the impact of these accidents represents only a fraction of the oil released by shipping operators and this in turn represents only a small part of the total volume of oil discharged into the marine environment. For shipping operators, the main cause of pollution is operational discharges, either accidental or deliberate. As levels of maritime traffic increase, the impact of these discharges is expected to get worse. These discharges and accidents threaten fragile coastal ecosystems, impact on tourism and generate significant clean-up costs – as an indication, direct clean up costs following the Prestige are estimated to be in the region of €2.5 billion.In Europe, several regional agreements have been set up to prevent operational discharges in the North Sea, the Baltic Sea and the Mediterranean Sea. These are actively supported by cooperation agreements for aircraft surveillance of shipping lanes to detect vessels making illicit discharges and the exchange of evidence between states to improve the prosecution of offenders.The European policy goal is a complete elimination of discharges into the marine environment by 2020. New legislation has been put in place including the creation of the European Maritime Safety Agency, the introduction of double hulled tankers and the Ship Source Pollution Directive. This directive makes any discharge in European waters or adjacent areas of the High Seas a criminal offence. These packages represent a significant expansion of the legal apparatus available to deter operational discharges in European seas. However, without effective surveillance and enforcement these objectives will not be met.Even with such policies in place, accidents can still occur and effective response tools are critical to protect Europe’s sensitive coastal areas. Timely deployment of clean up and containment assets is critical and this requires effective monitoring and forecasting of the evolution and drift of large spills in order to identify areas at risk and the most appropriate responses.

7.3.2 Service RequirementsRoutine surveillance of sea lanes in Europe appears to be acting as a deterrent on illegal discharges but more needs to be done. Wide area SAR coverage of European waters on a regular (daily) basis can ensure oil slicks are detected within 20-30 minutes of the satellite overpass. Combining SAR images with AIS data streams can enable a match between an oil slick and a vessel track, supporting improved polluter identification.Drift forecasting services are the first stage in cueing an emergency response to a major oil slick. These require high resolution models (approximately 1km) capable of forecasting the evolution of a large oil slick in time steps of 6-12 hours out to a


forecast time of 72-96 hours in advance. Their operation, typically by a specialist intermediate user, is a downstream service (as provided by the ESA GSE MarCoast and the Sea Track web servicein the Baltic for example). These local models must have access to boundary conditions provided by regional seas models, operated by the MCS, to ensure accurate representation of oceanic conditions and effective characterisation of their effects on the oil slick ( e.g. weathering, evaporation, advection, beaching etc). Access to geographic information on sensitive ecosystems, beach types and local infrastructure is also essential.

7.3.3 Specific Product RequirementsFor polluter identification:

High quality rapid (within 30 minutes of satellite overpass) identification of oil spills with better than 90% probability of detection for large spills and a false alarm rate lower than 10% of all high confidence spillsCo-registration of SAR detected oil spills with AIS data streams with a geometric accuracy no worse than a single pixel of the SAR data.

For drift & spill evolution forecasting:Current, salinity, temperature analysis and forecast profiles with spatial samplings for regional seasWind and wave analysis and forecast profiles with performance levels equivalent to current European regional products

7.3.4 Observing System RequirementsTo support these activities, SAR systems with a swath of 400km, a spatial resolution of 100m and a daily revisit over European waters are required. In addition, the ground segment must ensure that SAR imagery for all European waters are processed and analysed within 30 minutes of the satellite overpass.Access to AIS data streams (and LRIS when available) is critical for polluter identification. This must be on timescales consistent with those of the SAR data processing.Finally, to support the oil spill drift forecasting, ocean state observations are necessary. These are based on state of the art regional seas models for all European waters which require both satellite and in-situ measurements. Satellite measurements include sea surface temperature at 1km spatial resolution and sea level anomaly data with a precision and sampling at least equivalent to that obtainable currently from the combination of Jason and Envisat radar altimeter data.

7.3.5 Relevant Current Coordinating OrganisationsEuropean level organisations: EMSA, MCMPRegional level agreements and networks - HELCOM, Bonn Agreement, REMPEC, Network of North Sea Prosecutors,Expert groups - EGEMP

7.3.6 End-to-end servicesGMES (in partnership with EMSA) will guarantee the basic EO data streams to support oil spill detection and polluter identification.


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Under contract to EMSA, a data assembly centre will identify oil slicks and issue warnings as appropriate.The MCS will support oil spill detection and drift forecasting through:

The provision of basic oceanographic data to enable operators to improve the quality of their oil spill identification working practicesThe provision of state of the art modelling using regional seas models for the Arctic, Baltic, North Sea, North West Atlantic, Mediterranean and Black Seas. These will include the integration of appropriate atmospheric forcing terms. This will ensure:

Integrated long range drift forecasting for tier 3 slicks (e.g. Prestige type events)

accurate boundary, initial and forcing conditions on local models used for high resolution oil spill evolution forecasting

Validation data on all oceanographic products provided and advice and training on the use of these products.

Based on the above and ancillary data (shown in italics) downstream service providers will: Provide advice to operators (Coast Guards) on actions to be taken based on the location, type of oil, volume released, forecast drift and evolution, assets at risk;Assemble evidence necessary for prosecution;…

7.3.7 BenefitsSustained, regular access to SAR data and their expert interpretation (to achieve the required detection performance) coupled with the MCS services described above and access to local, high resolution models operated by intermediate users/downstream service providers on a sub regional scale, should allow an uniform service to be delivered everywhere it is required within European waters. The existence and widespread advertising of such a service will act as a strong deterrent to would-be offenders and contribute significantly to their detection and prosecution if they are not deterred.Although a major accidental release is unlikely to be detected for the first time from SAR data, subsequent updates which characterise the extent and structure of the spill at the sea surface acts as validation (or otherwise) of drift and evolution predictions and provides a new source term for subsequent predictions. Forecasts of beaching and prospective contamination of other marine assets at risk enable prioritisation of efforts to collect oil at sea and the assembly of clean-up resources.

Appendices


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GMES Fast Track Marine Core Service Strategic Implementation Plan Page 67

GMES Fast Track Service Implementation Groups: Terms of Reference and composition and working methods of the Marine Core Service Implementation Group

Terms of ReferenceTo supervise and validate the implementation of the ”fast track” services, in particular by organising regular progress reviews during the developmental period, and to report on its progress to the GMES management structure. This will involve:

Interacting with major relevant user organisations at EU and national levels, representing their interests and advising on invested resources to exploit the added value of GMES.Proposing specific activities to be included under the “fast track” service agenda, both related to “core” services and to possible downstream elements, and discussing possible collective paths for all related activities.Acting as an “advisory board” to all the main projects (funded by the EC, ESA or other national or European international organisations) linked to the “fast track” service agenda. This would include, for example:

a. Giving advice to all such projects with regard to cost-efficiency, long-term sustainability and user requirement compliance

b. Helping define, distinguish and prioritise operational and R&D tasks.

More generally, giving advice about the work plan and the funding issues related to the implementation and operation of the “fast track” services, including the internal organisation and functions.Gathering information about relevant complementary activities in the EU and Member States, having regard to interoperability and efficient integration into an ongoing update of the service definition with a vision beyond 2008, including the context of FP7 support.Advising the EC on reference documents related to other essential components of the “fast track” services, notably the development of related space infrastructure (by ESA and other national or European organisations).Advising the EC on a coordinated policy for access to data (“data procurement”) in the context of FP7, as well as on other important related issues (e.g. on data and service information policies).Reporting to GAC meetings on the above issues.

To help organise topical workshops and conferences where appropriate during the implementation period, in order to improve user awareness of the “fast track” services and consolidate and enlarge their user base, with a specific emphasis on regional issues. This will include:

Reporting on “fast track” service developments at major relevant workshops. Helping promote GMES and establish brand values.

Composition & working methods of the Marine Core Service Implementation GroupThe Marine Core Service Implementation Group (IG) is comprised of representatives of EuroGOOS (chairman), the EEA, the EMSA, the EC Maritime Policy Task Force, the ESF Marine Board and EUMETNET. ESA and EUMETSAT are observers at its meetings and OSPAR, HELCOM and Barcelona have been invited to act in a similar capacity. Meeting papers and reports have been provided to them and a representative of OSPAR has recently joined the IG. The IG has met four times in 2006 and has fulfilled its obligations in this first year by:

a. building upon the conclusions of the Workshop on the MCS held in Brussels on October 27-28 2005;

b. receiving advice from the user community represented on the IG;c. identifying and clarifying, a number of specific issues through small

Working Groups;d. providing specific advice to ESA and EUMETSAT on the space

infrastructure required by the MCS and receiving feedback and further advice from them;

e. drawing upon the findings of relevant research and development funded by the EC Framework Programmes, the ESA GSEs and national programmes

f. taking note of guidance from GOOS and GCOS and their advisory groups and research projects/initiatives;

g. making presentations and providing reports on emerging ideas to the GAC and, by invitation, appropriate meetings of EuroGOOS & a European Marine Monitoring and Assessment (EMMA) workshop on operational oceanography hosted by the EEA;

h. receiving input from interested parties in Member States;i. preparing this Strategic Implementation Plan.

Specific advice has also been received from the GMES Bureau and members of the MERSEA consortium, who have contributed extensively to the Working Groups.


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Characterisation of MCS variables & productsThe most basic service of the MCS is the transformation of raw data into quality controlled data sets and products. Marine core products include all real-time and archived observational data, and real-time and archived output from the numerical oceanprediction systems which have undergone automated quality control and/or automated processing, e.g. data synthesis, gridded fields. All information that results from the transformation or processing of data, or from mathematical models, in the form of pictures, charts, text or data files is also a product.The marine core products can be derived directly from observations (satellite and in situ; global and regional) or from numerical prediction models (Global, Arctic, Baltic, Mediterranean, N-W Shelf, Black Sea).A preliminary list of marine state variables to be monitored is contained in the recommendations of GOOS, the Coastal Ocean Observing Panel (COOP), including the Essential Climate Variables of GCOS extended by considerations of environmental variables of specific European interest (oil slicks). The related marine core products are listed in Table A2.1 together with their expected delivery status by 2008.It must be recognized that ecosystem variables present a scientific challenge at present and that uncertainties with them are much larger than for the physical variables. Care must be taken not to release products prematurely, before full confidence can be stated. Winds and wave core products will need to be carefully coordinated with Meteorological Offices. The bio-chemical, bathymetry and shoreline state variables are monitored by existing coastal observational networks and they should be coordinated through EEA actions; several of those variables are more in the near-shore domain and therefore a result of national monitoring.Generally, the MCS will deliver products in real time, in the form of short term forecasts (10 days), and as archives of observational and optimal estimates of the relevant state variables and the 3-D state of the ocean. Regular re-analysis over extended periods (several years) will be produced, as more data are retrieved and quality controlled, and based on the latest modelling upgrades. Reports and bulletins for Institutional users will be produced on a periodic basis.Services are distinguished by the delivery of products and, where necessary, guidance on their essential characteristics and optimum use. The availability of such guidance will be a hall-mark of the MCS.

Geophysical State Variable Marine core products derived

from observations

Marine core products

derived from models

Products expected to be

available by2008

Sea level, sea surface height ü ü üTemperature ü ü üSalinity ü ü üCurrents ü ü üSurface winds ü ü üSurface waves ü ü üSea ice (extent, concentration, thickness, motion)

ü ü ü

Biophysical State VariableAttenuation of solar radiation – Note 4 ü üBio-geochemical State VariableChlorophyll-a ü ü üDissolved inorganic nutrients ü üDissolved O² ü üpCO² üBenthic biomass – Note 3 üSediment grain size & organic content üFaecal indicators - Note 1

Oil slicks - Note 2

The first column is derived from the common state variables indicated by the COOP Implementation Plan (2005) and the essential climate variables of

GCOS. The second and third column indicate the basic information source for the products and the third those that will be available by 2008 (most are

already available).Notes:1. This is not a common denominator variable, although it provides a useful

indication of the presence of specific forms of pollution. It is also monitored close to shore rather than on a regional or global scale.

2. This is not a common denominator variable, but is certainly of regional importance. The envisaged role of the MCS is to provide the products that enable predictions of the evolution and movement of oil slicks in dedicated downstream services – see Section 6.3

3. This requires extensive, labour intensive observation and analysis. There is no prospect of obtaining such data in near real time.

4. or assimilation by models, it may be more fruitful to deliver the Intrinsic Optical Properties of the ocean surface inferred from the EO Ocean Colour measurement.


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Adopted Report from the Working Group on Space Infrastructure for the GMES Marine Core ServiceP.Y. Le Traon, J. Johannessen, I. Robinson, O. TrieschmannSeptember 12, 2006

Executive SummaryThe working group was asked to provide recommendations for the space infrastructure required by the GMES Marine Core Services. The work relied on existing ESA reports (Roadmap study, Sentinel MRDs) and background knowledge of the WG members. An analysis of Sentinel-3 specifications was carried out and main issues for the three main sensors/systems (altimetry, sea surface temperature and ocean colour) have been identified. Requirements for Sentinel-1 (SAR) are also given as SAR data are needed to establish a European service for oil spill and sea ice monitoring. Requirements for Jason, METOP, MSG/MTG and for non- European missions are also analysed. Main recommendations are summarized hereafter:

General recommendations:Continuity of observation is crucial. This is particularly critical around 2010 when data gaps could occur for several of the most critical observations. Decisions for developing the first of the GMES satellites must then be taken most urgently.It is more critical to establish satellite series for sustainable service availability than to try optimizing the specifications and designing for any one satellite and its instruments, if the latter leads to expensive, non renewable satellites. Establishing satellite series should lead to significantly lower production costs.GMES should allow for research and technological developments. In particular, the possibility of embarking new instruments with the potential to meet GMES needs should be considered. Wide Swath altimetry and geostationary ocean colour are the two most important new technology developments that will benefit the GMES MCS in the long run.

Specific recommendations:The Jason series (high accuracy altimeter system for climate applications and as a reference for other missions) is an essential and critical component of the GMES satellite programme for MCS. Planning of Jason-3 must be a priority for GMES.The MCS requires a high resolution altimeter system with at least three altimeters in addition to the Jason series. Sentinel-3 should include a constellation of two satellites, flying simultaneously, providing adequate coverage and operational robustness. Instrumentation costs for S3 should be reduced as much as possible to allow for a two- satellite system.Compared to the present design of S3 instrumentation, the priority for Sea Surface Temperature is for high accuracy dual view measurements. The large swath requirement has a much lower priority, in particular (but not only), if S3 is a two satellite system. As far as Ocean Colour is concerned, a sensor having a similar spectral resolution to MERIS is essential to meet the important shelf and coastal ocean water quality measurement requirements. The use of a SeaWiFS type of instrument (reduced number of channels) would serve only the minimum operational requirements for the open ocean.

SAR data (Sentinel 1) are required for oil spill detection and sea ice monitoring. This is clearly a European core service that should be considered as part of the MCS. The requirement is for at least one and preferably two SAR missions in addition to the other non-European missions (e.g. Radarsat).Access to other European and non-European (e.g. NPOESS, RADARSAT) satellite data in real time is fundamental for the MCS.Ground segment requirements will be addressed in a specific report/note. The main recommendation is likely to be that the GMES ground segment should develop stronginterfaces with Eumetsat Ocean&Sea Ice SAF and with the MCS satellite Thematic Assembly Centres (TACs).

Introduction and mandate of the WGThe working group was asked to provide to the implementation group:

A description of the best case specification for those parameters required by theMarine Core Service that can be estimated from space.A description of possible degradations of these specifications and their likely impact upon the Marine Core Service.A description of the satellite systems and instrument specifications required to fulfil these various options.An analysis of the foreseeable satellite systems worldwide which would contribute to fulfil these various options.An analysis of the specifications to request to ESA and European national space agencies for their foreseeable projects to meet the requirements as best as possible for the lowest cost. In this analysis, the Sentinel 3, Jason series, MSG and Metop missions should be considered in particular.An analysis of the major gaps in terms of continuity, parameters, precision, space time coverage and their impact on the Marine Core Service.

The work relied on existing ESA reports (Roadmap study, Sentinel MRDs) and background knowledge of the WG members.The report is organized as follows. The next section summarizes the main requirements from the MCS as stated during the MCS workshop (October 2005). We then proceed to the analysis of Sentinel-3 specifications and identify the main issues for the three main sensors/systems: altimetry, sea surface temperature and ocean colour. Requirements for Jason, METOP, MSG/MTG and for non- European missions are also analysed. The same analyses are performed to define the requirements for Sentinel-1 (SAR data for a European core Service for oil spill and sea ice monitoring). A summary of main recommendations is given in the conclusion.

Main requirements from the MCSThe main requirement from the MCS is to have a long-term, continuous access to the core operational satellite observations required for the global and regional ocean monitoring and forecasting systems. Sea level, SST, Ocean Colour, sea ice and winds are the backbone prognostic parameters in operational oceanography. Such data are needed to constrain ocean models. Sea Surface Salinity will be needed on the longer run but feasibility must be first demonstrated (SMOS and Aquarius). In addition, radar backscatter signals are the basic source for operational oil spill and sea ice monitoring.


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From these requirements and taking into account existing and planned missions, the GMES Marine core services main requirements for space infrastructure (Oct MCS workshop, Oct.,2005) were derived as:

AATSR-class SST needed as part of combined satellite/in situ SST measurement system to give the highest absolute accuracy.3-4 altimeters required: as the only plausible way to initialise ocean mesoscale models. Need long term series of Jason satellites (climate reference).Ocean colour increasingly important.SAR for sea-ice characteristics and for ocean pollution monitoring.Access to other European and non-European satellite data.The main mandate of the WG was to revisit these requirements and analyze trade- offs (costs/performances) options.

A3.4. Review of Sentinel 3

Overview of ESA Sentinel 3 MRDAs stated in the ESA MRD, Sentinel 3 should embark three main sensors:1. Altimetry. Main instrumentation is a SRAL (heritage of Poseidon and Cryosat)

altimeter. Objective is to provide a high inclination mission complementary to the Jason series. SRAL will also allow the monitoring of sea ice.

2. Sea Surface Temperature. Instrumentation is similar to AATSR, i.e. dual view for precise SST retrieval. In addition, single view measurements over a wider swath are foreseen. This should allow a revisit time of 1 to 2 days.

3. Ocean Colour. The instrument should have 15 channels (MERIS and VGT heritage) and a 1500 km swath. Ocean colour capabilities are similar to MERIS but with improvements in terms of swath and sun glint effect. The instrument is also designed to fulfil land requirements (as VGT on board Spot4). It has 8 cameras with 2 for land requirements.

S3 thus covers not only ocean but land requirements. This has an impact on the design and cost of the OC sensor.Orbit is sun synchronous with a 35 day repeat as ENVISAT (but with a different ground track pattern). The ascending time should be 10 a.m. Life time of the satellite is 7 years with the first mission scheduled in 2011 and the second in 2014 (to increase the sampling). The full mission duration is 20 years but this cannot be achieved with three satellites only.

AltimetrySatellite altimetry is the most essential observing system required for global operational oceanography. It provides global, real time, all-weather sea level measurements (SSH) with high space/time resolution. Sea level is a strong constraint to infer the 4D ocean circulation through data assimilation. Altimeters also measure significant wave height, which is essential for operational wave forecasting. High resolution from multiple altimeters is required to adequately represent ocean eddies and associated currents (the “ocean weather”) in models. Most MCS applications (e.g. marine security, pollutionmonitoring) require high resolution surface currents that cannot be adequately reproduced without a high resolution altimeter system. Use of altimeter data and

ocean models to improve hurricane intensification forecasting also requires resolution of warm eddies and their thermal structure. The Gamble project (Cotton et al., 2004) as well as recent studies (Pascual et al. 2005; 2006) show that, at least three, but preferably four, altimeter missions are needed for monitoring the mesoscale circulation.This is particularly needed for real time nowcasting and forecasting. For example, significant degradation of the performance of MERSEA global and regional ocean forecasting systems and downstream services (e.g. Ocean Numerics service for offshore industry in the Gulf of Mexico) was recently observed when the number of available altimeters was reduced from three to two due to the unavailability of ENVISAT data (Dombrowsky et al., personal communication).

Application area

Accuracy* Spatial resolution

RevisitTime

Priority

1 Climate applications

1 cm* 300-500 km 10-20 days High

and referencemission

2 Ocean nowcasting/

3 cm* 50-100 km 7-15 days High

forecasting formesoscaleapplications

3 Coastal/local 3 cm* 10 km 1 day Low**

Table 1: User requirements for different applications of altimetry

*for the given resolution;**limited by feasibility

Class

Orbit Mission characteristics Revisit interval

Track separation at the Equator

A Non-sun synchronous

High accuracy for climate applications and to reference other missions

10-20 days

150-300 km

B Polar Medium-class accuracy 20 - 35 days

80 - 150 km

Table 2: Altimeter mission characteristicsTables 1 and 2 give the requirements for different applications of altimetry and characteristics of altimeter missions. The main MCS requirements for satellite altimetry can be summarized as follows:Priority 1 is to ensure the continuity of the Jason (reference mission and climate applications) and ENVISAT time series. This requires inclusion of the Jason series as a major and critical component of the GMES MCS altimeter system. It requires one class A and one class B altimeter mission.Priority 2 is to augment the sampling. The main requirement for medium to high resolution altimetry would be to fly three class B altimeters in addition to the Jason series (class A). This would yield a track separation of about 80 km at the Equator and an effective repeat period of about 10 days (e.g. the same ground track as ENVISAT with a pseudo repeat period of 35 days/3). The recommendation for S3 mission would be to fly as soon as possible the second satellite (e.g. one year after the first launch). The recent descoping of the NPOESS altimeter (which was assumed to provide the third altimeter) makes the recommendation even more


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important. Such a scenario would also provide an improved operational reliability (e.g. in case of a satellite failure, continuity of service -albeit in a degraded mode- would be guaranteed). Moreover, it would enhance the spatial and temporal sampling for monitoring and forecasting significant wave height.MCS performances require the compliance with regard to priority 1 and priority 2 requirements, i.e. three class B altimeters in addition to the Jason series (class A).In parallel, there is a need to develop/test innovative instrumentation (wide swath) to better answer existing and future MCS requirements for high resolution.

SSTTable 3 summarises the requirements for sea surface temperature (SST). The slightly tighter resolutions than specified in Table 7 of the Sentinel 3 MRD reflect recent trends inthe models that assimilate SST. Requirements 1, 2 and 3 correspond to the well defined needs of the key operational users, whereas 4 expresses a general aspiration to detect thermally strong small scale features in coastal waters Because there are no strong operational drivers, requirement 4 should be assigned a lower priority than the other three applications for which there is an established user base. Clearly defined operational benefits will accrue from satisfying needs 1, 2 and 3.

Application area Temperature accuracy [K]

Spatial resolution

[km]

RevisitTime

Priority

1 Weather prediction

0.2 – 0.5 10 – 50 6 – 12 hrs High

2 Climate monitoring

0.1 20 – 50 8 d High

3 Ocean forecasting

0.2 1 – 10 6 – 12 hrs High

4 Coastal/local 0.5 < 0.3 1 d Low

Table 3: User requirements for SST provisionIn order to meet the key requirements of the MCS for SST (1-3 in table 3) no single sensor is adequate. To remedy this, the GODAE High Resolution SST Pilot Project (GHRSST-PP) has established an internationally accepted approach to blending SST data from different sources that complement each other. For this to work effectively, there must be an assemblage of four distinct types of satellite SST missions in place at any time, as defined in Table 4.

SST mission type Radiometer wavebands

Nadir resolution

Swath width

Coverage/revisit

A Two polar orbiting meteorological satellites with infra-red radiometers. Generates the basic global coverage

3 thermal IR (3.7, 11, 12 •m) 1 near-IR, 1 Vis

~1 km ~2500 km Day and night global coverage by each satellite

B Polar orbiting dual-view radiometer. SST accuracy approaching 0.1K, used as reference

3 thermal IR (3.7, 11,12 •m) 1 near-IR, 1 vis, each with dual view

~ 1 km ~ 500 km Earth coverage in ~4 days

standard for other types.

C Polar orbiting microwave radiometer optimised for SST retrieval. Coarse resolution coverage of cloudy regions

Requires channels at ~ 7 and ~ 11 GHz

~ 50 km (25 km pixels)

~ 1500 km Earth coverage in 2 days

D Infra-red radiometers on geostationary platforms. Spaced around the Earth

3 thermal IR (3.7, 11,12 •m) 1 near-IR, 1 Vis

2 - 4 km Earth disk from 36000 km altitude

Sample interval < 30 min

Table 4: Minimum assemblage of missions required to meet the need for operational SST.

The SST sensor on Sentinel 3 should not be treated as a stand-alone mission, but as one of the essential components in the global assemblage of SST sensors (Table 4). The priorityexpressed by the international SST community, through GHRSST, is for GMES to continue to provide a type B (ATSR class) sensor. Its on-board calibration system and especially itsdual-view methodology allow AATSR to deliver the highest achievable absolute accuracy ofSST, robustly independent of factors such as stratospheric aerosols from major volcanic eruptions or tropospheric dust, which cause significant biases in other infra-red sensors.Because its absolute calibration (for dual view) is better than 0.2 K it is used for bias correction of the other data sources before assimilation into models or analyses.When Sentinel 3 operates, two type A sensors will undoubtedly be in place for the meteorological community, probably a combination of METOP carrying AVHRR and NPOESS carrying VIIRS. The type D sensor appropriate for Europe will be SEVIRI on MSG, and something similar on GOES-E and other geostationary satellites for a global coverage.What will be lacking beyond the lifetime of AATSR is a type B sensor. By meeting this need on Sentinel-3, ESA will allow all the other SST products of lower quality to be upgraded and become fit for the operational models which underpin the MCS. There remains some uncertainty about type C provision beyond AMSR-E on Aqua. It had been expected thatCMIS on NPOESS could fulfil this role but it has been removed. If JAXA can not provide continuity of AMSR, Europe may need to look again at providing a microwave radiometer carrying ~7 GHz and ~11 GHz channels. However, the AATSR replacement remains the priority.In recommending that Sentinel 3 should carry an infra-red sensor of type B, based on the AATSR heritage, we specify that its key design driver should be the absolute accuracy of retrieved SST that is achieved. This requires three infra-red channels, each with a dual view in order that the atmospheric correction process is robust to changes in atmospheric aerosols as well as water vapour. It will also require near-IR and visible channels to facilitate cloud detection. Since global 4-times daily coverage will be provided by the meteorological (type A) sensors, there is no need


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for Sentinel-3 to offer wide-swath SST coverage. Wide swath coincidence between SST and ocean colour is a low priority for MCS compared with providing the reference standard for the global SST assemblage of sensors, and should not be allowed to compromise that role. In order to secure the maximum integrity of the long term climate record, mission overlap of the Sentinel Type B sensor with Envisat AATSR is highly desirable.The preferred orbit to meet the primary SST objective is for a morning overpass before diurnal warming has developed significantly. A 10.00-10.30 equator crossing is not optimal but is an acceptable compromise.

Ocean ColourThe requirements for ocean parameters derived from satellite colour sensors as stated in Table 5 of the Sentinel 3 MRD fairly represent the needs of European operational oceanography. Within MCS, the data products needed to support forecasting models of open ocean biogeochemical processes are the concentration of chlorophyll-a (Chlo), total suspended material (TSM), the optical diffuse attenuation coefficient (K) and the photosynthetically available radiation (PAR). The latter two are not explicitly mentioned in the Sentinel 3 MRD but are needed to define the in-water light field that drives photosynthesis in ocean ecosystem models. Progress towards assimilation of ocean colour data is less mature than for SST or SSH, but by 2010 there will be a demand for assimilation of near-real time Chlo, K and PAR, in the open ocean, which could be met by a spectrally simple SeaWiFS-like colour sensor. In the shelf seas, where MCS must monitor water quality, marine ecosystem models will require input of K and PAR. but it is less likely that satellite data products such as Chlor and TSM will be assimilated by 2010. Rather they will be applied directly by users as an essential component of marine environment management (e.g. reporting HAB, eutrophication, sediment transport etc).

Category of use Optical class of

water

Minimum set of satellite-derived variables needed

Accuracy[%]

Spatial resolution

[km]

RevisitTime

1 Assimilation into Case 1 Chlor 30% 2 - 4 1 – 3 daysoperational open K 5%ocean models PAR 5%

Lw(•) 5%2 Ingestion in Case 2 K 5% 0.5 - 2 1 day

operational shelf PAR 5% desired, butsea & local models Lw(•) 5% 3-5 days

Chlor 30% usefulTSM 30%

CDOM 30%3 Data products used Case 2 K 5% 0.25 - 1 1 day

directly by marine PAR 5% desired, butmanagers in shelf Lw(•) 5% 3-5 daysseas Chlor 30% useful

TSM 30%CDOM 30%

4 Global ocean Case 1 Chlor 10 – 30% 5 - 10 8 d averageclimate monitoring K 5%

PAR 5%5 Coastal ocean

climate monitoringCase 2 Chlor

TSM CDOM K

10 – 30%10 – 30%10 – 30%

5 8 day average

PAR 5%

K 5%6 Coastal and

estuarine waterCase 2 Lw(•) 5% 0.1 - 0.5 0.5 – 2 hrs

quality monitoring

Table 5: User requirements for ocean colour data products

The needs of the MCS may therefore be summarised as in Table 5, which distinguishes categories of use between the needs of the open ocean forecasting models, the finer scale shelf sea and local models, and those operational end users who analyse the data directly rather than through assimilation into a model system. There is a variety of additional products desired in coastal waters depending on the local water character. These include the coloured dissolved organic material (CDOM) and the discrimination of different functional groups of phytoplankton. Unlike SST and altimetry, there is ongoing scientific debate about the best way to confront models with ocean colour satellite data, and the product definitions are not completely stable. In this situation, some operational users prefer to use directly the atmospherically corrected water leaving radiance, Lw(•) (defined over the spectrum of given wavebands), applying their own approach for deriving water quality information or for confronting a model. Climate applications (categories 4 and 5) are envisaged to be derived from the operational categories 1 and 2 respectively, trading spatial and temporal resolution for improved accuracy. Category 6 is included in Table 5 to represent those users needing to monitor estuarine processes in fine spatial detail and to resolve the variations within the tidal cycle. This is a much more demanding category than the others, and although desirable it does not have such a high priority as categories 2 and 3 which are central to the MCS requirements.Table 6 summarises the broad classes of colour sensor which could be made available. Class A is a simple SeaWiFS-like instrument with a resolution of 1 km and a set of 5 or 6 wavebands. This would be adequate for user categories 1 and 4, to monitor global chlorophyll for assimilation into open ocean ecosystem models and for monitoring global primary production, but would fail to meet the main MCS requirement to monitor water quality in coastal and shelf seas represented by user categories 2 and 3.These require a Class B imaging spectrometer sensor, satisfying the measurement requirements stated in the Sentinel 3 MRD. Table 7 summarises these, and broadly indicates the purpose of the various spectral bands. The set of spectral bands should include those used for MERIS, enabling new product retrieval algorithms based on MERIS data to be used. Additional bands in the red and near-infrared may be indicated by recent research using MERIS and MODIS data to observe turbid Case 2 waters. The fine spatial resolution of 0.2 – 0.5 km is desirable for coastal and shelf seas applications if the sensor is to resolve the short-scale patchiness characteristic of phytoplankton blooms. 1 km would be acceptable but misses fine structure in European Seas, demonstrated by comparisons between MODIS 250 m and 1 km images.The Class C sensor corresponds to an imaging spectrometer on a geostationary platform. As well as uniquely serving the user category 6 by resolving variability within the tidal cycle, it also serves other user categories in cloudy conditions by exploiting any available cloud windows that occur during the day. Such a sensor does not presently exist and it remains to be determined whether it would be possible to achieve fine spatial and/or spectral resolution at such a high altitude, and also to develop/adapt methodologies (inversion algorithms, calibration/validation methods) for this type of mission.Clas Orbit Sensor type Revisit Spatial Priorit


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s Time resolution yA Polar SeaWiFS type multispectral

scanner, 5-8 Vis-NIR wavebands

3 days 1 km High

B Polar Imaging spectrometer as in Table 5 (MERIS/MODIS type.)

3 days 0.25 – 1 km High

C Geostationary

Radiometer or spectrometer - feasibility to be determined

30 min 100 m – 2 km

Medium

Table 6: Classes of ocean colour sensorSpectral Bands

Minimum of 15 bands from 400-900nm. The role of the various bands is:413 nm: Discrimination of CDOM in open sea blue water443, 490, 510, 560 nm: Chlorophyll retrieval from blue-green ratio algorithms560, 620, 665 nm +? Potential to retrieve water content in turbid Case2 waters using new red-green algorithms665, 681, 709 nm +? Use of fluorescence peak for chlorophyll retrieval779, 870, nm for atmospheric correction plus another above 1000 nm to improve correction over turbid water.

Spatioal Resolution

2-4 km (global monitoring) 0.2-0.5 km (coastal)

Revisit time 1 day (coastal) – 2-3 days (global). Note that a 20º tilt capability to avoid sun glint considerably improves low latitude coverage and revisit time.

Observation time

Optimised to minimise sun-glint and cloud cover.

Table 7: Measurement requirements for Class B sensorIn order to satisfy the ocean colour measurement requirements of the MCS, the minimum requirement is for one Class B sensor and at least one other sensor (Class A, B or C). Thus, for example, it would be possible (just) to support the MCS with the ocean colour sensors presently operating (SeaWiFS, MODIS and MERIS), although some improvements to the spectral bandset is desired.Since neither MERIS nor MODIS can be expected to operate beyond about 2010, it is clear that a Class B sensor must be the priority for Sentinel 3. This should have a sun- synchronous orbit, and provision for tilting to avoid sun glitter at low latitudes. While the data processing should exploit the synergy from having colour and SST sensors on the same platform viewing the same scene, there is no requirement for them to have the same optical path.The VIIRS instrument on NPOESS is expected to have spatial resolution of about 1 km, with8 bands in the visible and NIR, comparable to SeaWiFS. With a wide swath it should complement Sentinel-3 sensor for meeting the global chlorophyll mapping requirement, but its spectral band set is seriously inadequate for coastal (Case 2) waters, and will notsustain the present capabilities of MODIS.While a single class B sensor on Sentinel-3 is a sine qua non for the MCS, a second class B sensor is also important. If this is not provided by another agency, it will be necessary for the Sentinel-3 mission to provide a second sensor in an afternoon

orbit. Meanwhile, it would also be worth exploring the feasibility of a Class C sensor to sit over longitude 0º.

Recommendations for the Jason and METOP, MSG/MTG series and for non- European missions complementary to Sentinel-3

Jason-3As noted in section 3.2, Jason-3 is an essential altimeter component for GMES MCS. The contribution of Jason-3 (or more exactly of a Jason series) is critical for the MCS for three main reasons:1. to provide high accuracy sea level measurements over long time periods that

are necessary to monitor ocean climate variations (e.g. mean sea level rise, El Nino/La Nina, North Atlantic Oscillation, etc). Those large scale signals are often small and difficult to observe but they potentially have a large impact on applications (e.g. triggering of an El Nino event).

2. to provide a reference for the other missions. Before merging or assimilating data from different altimeters, it is necessary to remove all the inconsistencies between the different missions. Without a Jason reference, inconsistencies between different altimeters can create spurious signals that can be misinterpreted as eddies or fronts/currents (thus impacting most of the MCS applications).

3. to improve the space/time sampling in addition to the other altimeters.Requirements for Jason-3 are as follows:

It should have the same accuracy as T/P, Jason-1 and Jason-2. Orbit error should be, in particular, of the order of 1 cm rms. The Jason-3 altimeter system should also allow the estimation of mean sea level drift with accuracy better than 1 mm/year.One should allow an overlap of at least 6 months with Jason-2.Orbit must be optimised non-synchronous to avoid aliasing of major tidal signals onto low frequency signals. This is mandatory to monitor climate signals but also coastal regions (where tidal models have still large errors). Ideally, the orbit should be the same as T/P, Jason-1 and Jason-2. However, to reduce costs and to optimize mission duration, otherorbits could be analyzed. A new Jason-3 orbit should be optimized, in particular, with respect to S3 orbit(s).

Other European and non-European missionsIn addition to the Sentinel series, the MCS will rely through its R/S TACs (remote sensingThematic Assembly Centres) on other European and non European satellites.Requirements are as follows:

Access to MSG, MTG, and METOP SST data in real time is required following standards defined by the GHRSST-PP and MCS SST TAC.Access to METOP ASCAT data for specific MCS wind products (MCS wind TACs). Access to non-European satellite data in real time. In particular, access to NPOESSL1B and Level 2 data in real time (SST, OC)Access to other altimeter missions (e.g. Alti-Ka) in real time through theSSALTO/DUACS altimeter TAC.


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Review of Sentinel 1 / SARSentinel-1 SAR is an imaging radar mission in C-band, aimed at providing continuity of data for user services, in particular those initiated within GMES Service Elements program ( http://earth.esa.int/gmes / ). The SAR observation requirements for the space component of GMES are summarized in Table 8 (from ESA MRD Sentinel-1) and are of relevance for both Marine Core Services and for Marine Downstream ServicesApplication area

SAR mode Spatial resolution [m]

Revisit Time

Priority

1 Oil pollution monitoring

ScanSAR 50-100 daily High

2 Ship detection and fishery monitoring

Strip map ScanSar

20 – 50 12 hours Medium

503 Sea ice and iceberg

monitoringScanSAR Strip map

50-100 daily high

20-504 Open ocean

surveillanceWave mode 10-50 Daily to

12 hoursmedium

Table 8: Key applications and their specification requirementsRequirements 1 and 2 (that are slightly connected) have high and medium priority respectively. They are related to the expressed needs specified by Euro pean legislations (i.e. OSPAR, HELCOM) as well as by the recent establishment of the European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA). Requirements 3 and 4 have also respectively high and medium priority. They are contrasted by the fact that 3 is regional to local specific and has a clear seasonal demand, while 4 is global and annual.The user service requirements for SAR are connected to monitoring of the European Marine Environment, the Arctic Environment and Sea Ice Zones, and the open ocean sea state monitoring. These requirements might be tailored to both core and downstream services. Global climate monitoring and forecasting undertaken by MCS relies on contribution from SAR to provide information products and indices on sea ice motion, thickness, lead area, and sea ice volume fluxes out of the Arctic through, for instance, the Fram Strait. On the other hand, oil spill and detailed sea ice monitoring where the contribution from SAR is of critical importance, are considered more relevant for downstream services (i.e. more details can be found in the EU funded OCEANIDES and ESA funded Marcoast and PolarView GMES Service Element project reports).Oil S p i l l: The European Member States have declared the goal of achieving zero pollution of the European waters by 2020. This encompasses an effective response and combating mechanism in case of both deliberate and accidental spills, but preferably through prevention of spills by applying a strong deterrence on the ship operators. Both response and deterrence require an efficient, pan-European monitoring system. Therefore space borne SAR data are a highly needed source of information for detection of oil spills both from illicit vessel discharges and major accidents (e.g. Prestige case). The continuing use of multiple platforms (minimum of 2) and wide swath sensors is necessary to maintain sufficient temporal and spatial coverage. Daily coverage is the aim for a pan-European oil spill monitoring. Although limitations of SAR exist, such as accurate spill identification and estimate of spill thickness, they can be overcome by supplementary aerial surveillance means.

http://earth.esa.int/gmes/

In particular the contribution from SAR observations and related information are needed for:

identifying illicit oil spills on a pan-European or even larger scalebetter support for combating and response in terms of drift forecasting and local sea state informationmore effective collection of evidence of potential polluters by combining vessel tracking systems with hindcasting and SAR imagery

To achieve the best monitoring results C-band SAR with a resolution of 50 m is appropriate. Studies have demonstrated that C-band SAR performs better than L- and X-band SAR for oil slick detection. The SAR imagery must be available to the institutions in charge of response in near-real-time (30min. after satellite overpass) to begin verification and response within a reasonable time. Whereas the imagery and feature extraction is a European core service, the tailoring and merging with other information (e.g. sea state and algae information) and models (also MCS services) are typically downstream activities. The wide area coverage of spaceborne-SAR imagery is unique and can not be obtained by classical aerial surveillance, which remains necessary for verification and combating support. The sum of these complementary systems will contribute to a much improved surveillance capability.Sea Ice: Sea ice plays a crucial role in air-sea interaction in polar regions and is of significant importance with regard to changes of both the climate and the environment. Satellite observations are the only source of continuous information about sea ice extent, concentration, type and drift. The sparseness of non-space observing systems and the high cost of operating such systems in polar regions (i.e. aircraft, icebreakers, helicopters, buoy systems, etc.) enhance the importance of satellite observing systems in these regions.In particular the contribution from SAR observations is highly needed for:

better understanding of sea ice deformation processes and their impact on climate changebetter management of environment, conservation of polar ecosystems and prevention/control of marine pollutionfacilitate fisheries and exploitation of oil and gas resources in polar regions safer sea transportation and offshore operations at high latitudes

Increased human activities in polar regions (i.e. fisheries, oil and gas exploitation, sea transportation in the Northern Sea Route) with risks of accidents and damage to a very vulnerable environment require improved monitoring and forecasting systems. Operational downstream services for offshore industry, shipping and safety in polar regions rely on regular iceberg detection and sea ice type, extent and deformation monitoring at a spatial resolution (~50 - 100 m) that is only feasible with spaceborne SAR. Building on these observations detailed information products such as ice types, concentration, thickness, roughness, ridges, leads, polynyas, fast ice, ice motion, presence of iceberg are delivered in near-real time. Within the downstream services these and other value-added products can be tailored to any specific regions and user requirements having special request for spatial and temporal coverage as well as information product accuracies such as for ice motion, thickness and probability density function of ridges.Sea state: The global measurement of sea state parameters is important for assimilation into wave models that, in turn, provide wave prediction for ship routing and for recreational use. SAR data lack information on shorter waves propagating in the sensor flight direction (azimuth), and depending on the sea surface motion waves shorter than150 m can usually not be resolved by SAR.


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The strict data requirements for these services regarding temporal coverage, revisit time and near real time availability have immediate impact on the system specification (see Table 9). Whereas, the selections of frequency and polarisation have relevance for the continuity aspect, the swath width is directly related to the global coverage, repeat cycle, spatial resolution and revisit time. For a 200 - 300 km wide swath imaging mode with 50-100 m resolution, the average revisit time shows a significant improvement when going from 1 to 2 SAR satellites; i.e. from about 6 to 3 days at equator, from slightly more than 4 to 2 days at mid-latitude and from 2 to 1 day at 70 N. Hence, in order to satisfy coverage requirements as well as programmatic considerations, the ESA GMES Programme proposal assumes a constellation with 2 satellites (Sentinel-1A and Sentinel-1B) operating with reliable and sufficient duty cycles to avoid unwanted data gaps.Single Satellite

First Priority

Frequency C-band (5.25 – 5.57 GHz)Polarization VV, HH, cross-polarization, full polarimetric considered bestSpatial Resolution

5 – 150 m

Swath width 20*20 km wave mode, 200-300 km wide swath# sub-swaths 3Revisit time 48 hours (Arctic), biweekly (mid-latitude), weekly (equator)Orbit, repeat cycle

polar (sun-synchronous), 12-day repeat-cycle

Constellation First PriorityFrequency C-band (Sentinel-1A) and L-band (Sentinel-1B)Polarization VV, HH, cross-polarization, full polarimetric considered bestSpatial Resolution

5 – 150 m

Swath width 20*20 km imagette, 200-300 km wide swath# sub-swaths 3Revisit time 12-24 (Arctic), biweekly 48 hours (mid-latitude), biweekly days

(equator)Orbit, repeat cycle

polar (sun-synchronous), 12-day repeat cycle

Table 9: Measurement specification for SAR

Other European and non-European SAR missionsSustainability and a sufficient coverage (wide swath width) of C-Band SAR satellites are the key issues for a successful operational service on oil spill and sea ice monitoring. Complementing this planned Sentinel-1 SAR spaceborne system there are the following additional approved and planned SAR missions:Complementary to Sentinel-1 SAR:

(C-band, approved) – Continuity Radarsat-2 SAR with tentative launch in 2007.

Higher resolution, but smaller swath width:(X-band, approved) – Experimental TerraSAR SAR with launch in June/July 2006.(X-band, approved) – Experimental COSMO-Skymed SAR with tentative launch in2007 for the first element of the constellation.

(C-band, planned) – Continuity Radarsat-3 with tentative launch in 2012.The important value of Radarsat 2 for the services and user requirements are ensuring the continuity aspects from Radarsat 1. The design of RADARSAT 3 is not yet defined. It might be a multi satellite constellation with a higher resolution but also with a lower swath width. Furthermore, the duty cycles and data acquisitions in polar regions regarding the experimental SAR missions are not known, and it is therefore unclear how much they can contribute to and be compliant with the requirements specified in Table 4.

Ground Segment (to be developed later)Ground segment requirements will be detailed in a separate report. Main recommendation is that GMES ground segments should develop strong interfaces with the MCS satellite Thematic Assembly Centres (TACs). TACs will gather data from European (through GMES ground segment and through Eumetsat and its Ocean&Sea Ice SAF) and non-European missions (e.g. NPOESS, RADARSAT) to prepare the satellite data sets and products required by the MCS modelling and data assimilation systems.

Summary of recommendationsMain recommendations are summarized below:

The Jason series (high accuracy altimeter system) is an essential and critical component of GMES satellite program for MCS. Planning of Jason-3 must be a priority of GMES. Ideally Jason-3 orbit should be the same as T/P, Jason-1 and Jason-2. If a new orbit isconsidered, it must remain non-synchronous to avoid aliasing of the main tidal constituents. A specific study on Jason-3 specification and optimization versus Sentinel-3 should be carried out.MCS requires a high resolution altimeter system with at least three altimeters in addition to the Jason series. Sentinel-3 should include a constellation of two satellites providing improved coverage and operational redundancy.Instrumentation costs for S3 should be reduced as much as possible to allow a two-satellite system. Compared to the present design of S3 instrumentation, the priority for Sea Surface Temperature is for high accuracy dual view measurements. Large swath requirement has a much lower priority, in particular (but not only), if S3 is a two satellite system.As far as Ocean Colour is concerned, the minimum requirement is to fly a SeaWiFS type of instrumentation (reduced number of channels) that covers operational requirements for the open ocean. For addressing coastal ocean water quality issues a similar spectral resolution to MERIS is, however, essential.In parallel with the development of the GMES space segment, technology infusion is needed. Wide Swath altimetry and geostationary ocean colour are the two most important new technology developments that will benefit the GMES MCS in the long run.SAR data (Sentinel 1) are required for oil spill detection and sea ice monitoring. This is clearly a European core service that should be considered as part of the MCS. The requirement is for at least one and preferably two SAR missions in addition to the other non-European missions (e.g. Radarsat). S1 has important applications for MCS and downstream services. Its benefit will be strongly improved, however, with a high resolution altimeter system (e.g. detecting oil pollution without the capability to forecast its drift).


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The sustainability of the C-band SAR sensors and the large coverage of European waters (which requires wide swath images) are the key requirement for oil spill and sea ice monitoring.Access to other European and non-European (e.g. NPOESS, RADARSAT) satellite data in real time (through the MCS TACs) is fundamental for the MCS.Ground segment requirements were marginally addressed in the report. Main recommendation is that GMES ground segments should develop strong interfaces with MCS satellite Thematic Assembly Centers (TACs). Ground segment requirements will be addressed in a specific report.

ReferencesPascual A., M.I. Pujol, G. Larnicol, P.Y. Le Traon and M.H. Rio, 2005. Mesoscale Mapping Capabilities of Multisatellite Altimeter Missions: First Results with Real Data in the Mediterranean Sea. J. Mar. Systems (in press).Pascual, A., Faugere, Y., G. Larnicol, P.Y. Le Traon, 2006. Improved description of the ocean mesoscale variability by combining four satellite altimeters. Geophys. Res. Letters,27, 2006.Cotton, D., et al., 2004. Global Altimeter Measurements By Leading Europeans (GAMBLE). Requirements for Future Satellite Altimetry: Recommendations for Missions and Research Programmes. Final report. “Thematic Network”, funded by the EC under Framework 5 – EVR1-CT-2001-20009.Hühnerfuss, H, W. Alpers, F. Witte, 1989. Layers of different thickness in mineral oil spills detected by grey level textures of real aperture radar images. Int. J. Remote Sensing, Vol.10, No. 6, 1989OCEANIDES EU-PP5-project Sentinel 1 MRD, ESA. Sentinel 3 MRD, ESA.


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Adopted Report of the In situ Infrastructure Working GroupWhile satellites provide a global view of the surface of the oceans, in situ systems provide complementary data, primarily by monitoring their interiors, although valuable surface measurements are made too. In the context of the MCS, global to regional scale observations are required to constrain the models at depth & provide surface calibration and verification data. The primary MCS requirement for in situ measurements at present is for the physical state variables of temperature, salinity & currents and for verification of the forcing wind and wave properties at the surface. However the cost of deployment is generally high, so where possible, it makes sense to make biological and chemical measurements at the same time, provided this does not create a disproportionate cost for the observing system itself.The candidate observing system technologies for in situ measurements required by the MCS comprise:

a. Drifting Argo Floats for the measurement of temperature and salinity profiles to ~2000 m and, by tracking them, mean subsurface currents.

b. Research vessels which deliver complete suites of multidisciplinary parameters from the surface to the ocean floor, but with very sparse and intermittent spatial coverage and at very high cost of operations.

c. XBTs launched by research vessels and ships of opportunity underway for the measurement of temperature and salinity profiles to ~450-750 m depth.

d. Surface Moorings capable of measuring subsurface temperature profiles in particular continuously over long periods of time. Currents are often monitored and meteorological measurements are usually made too. Biofouling restricts the range of measurements that can be made from long deployments in the photic zone but surface salinity and biogeochemical measurements are attempted.

e. Ferry-Box and other regional ship of opportunity measurement programmes for surface transects which may include temperature, salinity, turbidity, chlorophyll, nutrient, oxygen, pH and algal types.

f. The Continuous Plankton Recorder (CPR) operated by the Sir Alister Hardy Foundation for Ocean Science which is towed from merchant ships on their normal sailings in order to monitor the near-surface plankton of the North Atlantic and North Sea on a monthly basis.

g. The network of tide gauges provides long term reference and validation sea level data.

h. Gliders which complement floats and moorings and are able to perform transects of physical and biogeochemical parameters from the surface to 1000m at a lower cost than ships.

i. Surface drifters that are cheap and light-weight platforms which passively follow the horizontal near surface flow via a drogue/sail. They complement satellites for sea surface temperature and surface current measurements.


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j. Long-range (up to 200 km) HF-radar monitoring systems in specific regions of national/international interest and importance, typically as part of an observatory

At present it is not realistic to define the full range of in situ measurements and the infrastructure required for down stream services; they are too diverse and in many cases too immature. Progress here will be made by the efforts such as those of the Working Group on European Marine Monitoring and Assessment (EMMA), set up by DG Environment and of the European Environment Agency, which are actively working to define needs and methods of data gathering for assessments foreseen in the (draft) European Marine Strategy Directive. The role to be played here by the MCS can be discerned however, and this has been taken into account in this Report.There are two key considerations in designing and implementing the in situ infrastructure for the MCS: the performance and deployment of the observing systems themselves and the approach to the collection and processing of the data, at least to level 238.

Performance & deploymentBecause of the costs and general difficulty of deployment, it is never sensible to use sensors of marginal sensitivity, robustness and stability over as long a period as possible. Problems are caused by biofouling in the photic zone and attention has to be paid to this in the system maintenance programme at least.A key issue for the design of networks is the small scale of many important features in the oceans and seas (~100skm in the open ocean; ~10skm in strong flows). It is almost impossible to resolve such features using in situ methods alone; this has to be the role of remote sensing (e.g. EO) methods. The unique role of in situ networks is to augment such broad coverage of a limited set of variables by providing measurements which cannot be obtained in any other way, whilst paying attention to possible aliasing.

Network designObserving systems differ depending on the area and the phenomena to be sampled. They are usually sorted into 3 categories:

38 CEOS has defined a number of data/product levels for use in Earth Observation. It is helpful to use a common nomenclature in discussing data processing.Level 0 Data: Raw data after restoration of the chronological data sequence for each instrument, i.e. after demultiplexing of the data by instrument, removal of any data overlap due to the data dump procedure and relevant quality checks. Raw instrument data information (telemetry packets) is maintained during this process. Level 1a Data: Instrument data in full resolution with radiometric and geometric (i.e. Earth location) calibration computed and appended but not applied. Level 1b Data: Calibrated, earth located and quality controlled data, expressed as radiance or brightness temperature, in the original pixel location, and packaged with needed ancillary, engineering and auxiliary data. Level 1c Data: In case of the IASI spectra, level 1b data after application of the apodisation function. Level 2 Product: Earth located pixel values converted to geophysical parameters, at the same spatial and temporal sampling as the level 1b data.Level 3 Product: Gridded point geophysical products on a multi-pass basis. Level 4 includes the use

of other data sources, e.g. model results etc.

Global: The overall system (remotely sensed and in situ) is designed to provide data from all the oceans and be capable of resolving or at least avoiding excessive aliasing of important dynamical features. Realistically this demands observation on at least the order of 100km. Typically such a system delivers surface and upper ocean observations of a limited number of parameters (Temperature, salinity, SSH, SST, currents) on a time scale from 1 day to 1 month. Such a system can only be built at the international level.Regional: The overall system is designed to provide data in a specific area, such as a regional sea, to monitor specific dynamical phenomena and state features primarily to sustain one or more specific services (e.g. the TAO/TRITON/PIRATA buoy array for the in situ component of El Nino detection, the Arctic buoy network as a contribution to ice monitoring, etc).Again the goal is to resolve the important dynamical features which are of the order of a few tens of km in the regional seas. Collaboration between several countries (usually less than 10) is needed and the number of parameters is larger (between 10 and 20), including ocean (both physical and bio-chemical) and meteorological measurements. The temporal sampling is often at a higher rate: from hours to days.Coastal: These observing systems are usually set up at the national level to answer very specific questions such as coastal monitoring of the water quality or wind/wave/tide monitoring in harbour areas, HF radar image acquisition, etc. There is limited collaboration among countries and these data are often used exclusively by the coastal models that have led to setting up the system. These coastal observations that do not form part of multipurpose networks are not in the scope of MCS, but assist in the delivery of downstream services

Data collection & managementThere are a number of characteristics that define the fitness for purpose of any data collection scheme. These are considered in turn:

TimelinessMCS needs two types of data. Firstly there are those data delivered in near real time that are required for daily/weekly forecasting activities that provide the common denominator data for downstream services. Secondly there are data that are subject to greater quality control and delivered in delayed mode. These are


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particularly valuable data for reanalysis work, & to assist seasonal forecasting and climate monitoring/prediction where long term stability is essential and signals are small.In operational oceanography near real time has a specific meaning. The main criterion is the maximum delay between measurements and assimilation beyond which the measurement adds nothing to the performance of the model. There is no unique answer: this depends on the type of model, the variables that are assimilated, the forecast product and the application for which it is produced. For instance, assimilated information of deep ocean temperature and salinity will persist within an ocean global circulation model for weeks or months and so a delay of several days in supplying data can be acceptable. On the other hand, ocean mixed layers vary on more rapid timescales in response to the diurnal heating and to storms. The impact of such data will probably not persist more than 3-5 days after assimilation, so measurements are needed within a day. As a compromise, real time for operational oceanography generally means availability within 1 or 2 days from acquisition, to allow data centres to allow first-line quality-control of the data.

SustainabilityThe observations have to be sustained because when an emergency event happens (tanker pollution, storm events, …) only very few additional useful measurements can be taken. Numerical models that are assimilating data run according to a regular repetitive pattern and require data accordingly. Datasets required to describe climatologies need to be filled on a regular reliable basis. Although it is important for a sustainable operational system to be funded in an ongoing stable manner - in particular other than through research funding - the culture and success criteria of the organisation have to be appropriate too. Services and essential support activities have to be available at all times - 24-hour/7-day-a-week. Attention must be paid to product creation and delivery chains. Services should be fit for purpose and provided efficiently; appropriate performance measures need to be in place to verify this.All operational activities do need closely coupled R&D activities dedicated to exploiting new science, new sources of data & improved, more capable technology (particularly computer systems), in order to sustain existing services more efficiently and help deliver new and improved services.Although not always recognised as such these are key features of sustainability.AvailabilityAs indicated above, data from the domain of interest need to be available in a timely manner to sustain operational services. Because of chronic under- or non optimal sampling there is always value in sharing global and regional data particularly of the state and dynamical variables that are fundamental to the MCS. A data exchange policy that facilitates this is absolutely crucial to success therefore.

Data managementIn 1998 EuroGOOS issued a publication called "The science base of EuroGOOS" where some limitations related to data exchange were highlighted. The situation has improved but some statements are still relevant and targeted actions are necessary within Europe to solve them fully:

g. Lack of international infrastructure for operational oceanographic data gathering, transmission, and products, (e.g. as adopted in World Weather

Watch by the WMO), and consequently a lack of common standards. Although still substantially true in general, some experience on the global scale, within GODAE such as the Argo program have shown that it is possible to reach consensus on common standards (formats, real-time and delayed mode quality control, data distribution…)

h. Lack of a clear right or duty to collect and transmit real-time data. In the past five years we have seen the concept of “portals” emerging with the duty to serve their user in real time: Salto/DUACS for altimetry, Medspiration/GHRSST for SST, Argo and GOSUD Global Data centres, and JCOMMOps are examples that exist nowadays.

i. Lack of proper design of a service infrastructure, using, for example, multiple data inputs such as wind, waves, and currents, to generate predictions of oil spill movements. Such infrastructures are operational within the Baltic and on parts of the NW Shelf. They are being demonstrated and consolidated more generally within projects such as MERSEA, MARCOAST and Polarview.

j. Imbalance between monitoring (measurement) technology and capacity for post- processing data and subsequent real time use by numerical models. In part this has required the development of data assimilation methods in ocean modelling and as that has been shown to be possible and valuable the need has begun to be met through initiatives such as the Coriolis project in France. This effort should be sustained and expanded in the future.

A data management system for operational oceanography must provide quality controlled data, in a timely way, on a regular basis, according to procedures that are clearly documented and evolve upon common agreed decisions between user and provider. There are three fundamental characteristics that define such a system

A4.4. Data access

It has been demonstrated that professional users of data need portals that build the connection to all the relevant datasets and provide access to these data as if they were all in a single place. Data are acquired at coastal, regional, pan-continent, global levels and together they enable the overall operational system needed by users. More parameters are usually monitored and needed at the coast than on the global scale. In Europe, EuroGOOS Task Teams and then regional Operational Oceanographic Systems or Networks such as NOOS, BOOS and MOON are coordinating data exchange to sustain coastal and regional services. In principle the regional operational systems could organise data exchange between themselves and contribute to data exchange at the global level. Such coordination would complement initiatives like ESEAS for sea level, SeaDataNet for data infrastructure, DMAC in USA, Argo or GHRSST for GODAE, etc.


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Quality controlQuality control of data exchanged in near real-time must be automated leading to the rejection of outliers. In delayed mode, more scientific expertise is applied to the data and error estimations can be provided with the data.Data quality control is a fundamental component of any ocean data assimilation system because accepting erroneous data can cause incorrect forecasts, but rejecting extreme data can also lead to erroneous forecasts by missing important events or anomalous real features. The challenge of quality control is to check the input data against prior information and either reject or accept them. That prior information may include the historical error characteristics of such measurements and earlier forecasts for the data time, knowing the error characteristics of such forecasts. As most of the data are processed by different actors, but used all together by operational models, clear documentation of the quality control procedures, a homogenisation of the quality flags, and the reliability of different actors in applying these rules are required.

StandardisationData must be preserved in such a manner that their usefulness will be retained, essentially for all time. They must also be distributed so that a user can easily merge them with other relevant datasets. They must be catalogued in a way which will facilitate their use. This is the purpose of correctly defining data formats as well as maintaining metadata (data on the data) that need to be preserved for future processing.Data formats have always been a nightmare both for users and data managers and they all search for the "Esperanto" of data formats. Computer technology has improved the situation in the past decade and we are slowly moving from ASCII formats (easy to use by human eyes but not for software), to binary format (easy for software but not shareable among platforms (Windows, Unix, etc), to self-descriptive, multiplatform formats (Netcdf, Hdf, etc) that allow more flexibility in sharing data among a network and are read by all software that are in common use.A common vocabulary to record metadata is required. This should be easy to achieve for a specific community such as physical operational oceanography as the number of parameters is small, but it starts to be a bit more difficult when multidisciplinary datasets are addressed. To help in this area some metadata standards are emerging for the marine community with Marine XML in Europe, CF/COARDS convention in USA, and ISO19115 norm.

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