Progresses in assessing the quality of the Copernicus Marine near real time Northeast Atlantic and Shelf Seas models application.

Qualification and validation of operational ocean products are fundamental processes and vital part of the Copernicus Marine Service for evaluating added value of any new or upgraded release and for monitoring forecasting systems skills in operations. These have an important impact on both users and model developers, in providing a comprehensive understanding of forecasting systems reliability. As cross-cutting activity at production units’ level, and as providers of analysis and forecast ocean products for the Iberia-Biscay-Ireland (IBI) and Northwest Shelf (NWS) regions in the frame of the Copernicus Marine Service, we are continuing to incrementally evolve evaluation methods of forecasting products by improving our capacity in analysing ocean model data using newly available in-situ and satellite observations.

In this presentation, an overview of today capacity in assessing operational ocean model products derived from the Northeast Atlantic and Shelf Seas regions model is presented, including evaluation of ongoing numerical experiments, with an outlook on future product quality evolution. Starting from the NARVAL tool, currently used by the IBI Monitoring and Forecasting Centre for assessing daily operational production of physical and biogeochemical variables, we show how new digital tools can support regional fit-for-purpose assessment and perform multi-model/multi-parameter/multi-frequency verification (with a particular focus on biogeochemical variables) by accessing, using, and interoperating operational products available in the target regions through the Copernicus Marine Data Store.

This work presents the operational daily evaluation and monitoring of the IBI and NWS Blue and Green Ocean products, with a focus on recent systems upgrades and on forecast performances. Evolutions of product quality tools will include integration of new product types - like interim and multi-year regional datasets - with implementation of new metrics, and development of a new digital validation service where users (e.g., end users and intermediate users, including operational teams) will have access to NWS operational systems skills.