The Copernicus Marine achievements and plans to inform and support action for the Ocean

The EU Copernicus Marine Service, implemented by Mercator Ocean International with a large network of highly skilled observation and modelling production centers, is a world-leading, reference digital information service on the world ocean and EU regional seas.  The Copernicus Marine Service monitors in real time and over the past decades the world ocean across the entire water column using in situ and satellite observations and monitoring and forecasting systems. It provides free and fully open, regular and systematic reference information on the physical (blue) and biogeochemical (green) ocean and sea-ice (white) state for the global ocean and the European regional seas. The Copernicus Marine Service supports applications dealing with maritime safety, sustainable use of marine resources, healthy waters, informing coastal and marine hazard services, ocean climate services, protecting marine biodiversity.   

For the last 10 years, the Copernicus Marine has been implementing unique capabilities to inform and support action for the Ocean.    Through a regular dialogue with the user community and taking into account observation, science and technology advances, the service is continuously evolving to better answer user and societal needs.   For the next 5 years, Copernicus Marine will prepare the evolution of its capacity and portfolio through the development of the next generation of ocean and sea ice monitoring and forecasting systems (e.g. ensemble and extended-range forecasting, higher resolution, longer reanalyses, increased use of Artificial Intelligence) and the preparation of new services for the coastal marine environment and for marine biology.   This will fill critical gaps in our ability to monitor and forecast the Ocean.

The UN Decade of Ocean Science offers unique opportunities to strengthen international cooperation, sharing of knowledge and best practices that are essential to the Copernicus Marine Service evolution.  This allows aligning priority developments at international level to tackle the most challenging scientific issues.  Copernicus Marine has thus set up many links with the UN Decade through direct contribution to several major programmes and its close links with the OceanPrediction DCC. 

The presentation will give an overview of Copernicus Marine achievements to inform and support action for the Ocean.  Future plans and scientific challenges will be discussed.   The role of international cooperation in the framework of the UN Decade of Ocean Science will be highlighted.