ANNEX IIISupplementary provisions
ANNEX III THE TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS FOR THE COPERNICUS MARINE ENVIRONMENT MONITORING SERVICE 1. SCOPE The Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service (CMEMS) shall provide regular and systematic reference information on the physical and biogeochemical state, variability and dynamics of the ocean and marine ecosystems for the global ocean and the European regional sea. CMEMS shall provide products which can be used in various areas of application and encompasses the description of the current situation of the oceans (analysis), the prediction of the situation a few days ahead (forecast), and the provision of consistent retrospective data records for recent years (observations reprocessing and model re-analysis). The service shall generate products which can be input to further technical processing, as well as high level information in various forms for further expert assessment to support decision makers. The marine service shall provide a sustainable response to European users' needs in particular in application areas of marine safety, marine resources, marine and coastal environment and weather, climate and seasonal forecasting. It shall deliver generic and reliable information, derived from space and in-situ observations and from models – including forecasts, analyses and reanalyses – on the physical state and the marine biogeochemical characteristics over the global ocean and European regional seas. 2. USER REQUIREMENTS AND MAIN DOMAINS OF APPLICATION CMEMS shall provide services categorised into the following four topical domains. (1) Marine Safety Products shall provide information in support of safe activities at sea, such as marine operations, marine weather forecasting, sea ice forecasting, combating oil spills, ship routing, search and rescue, offshore wind platforms and all activities requiring safe offshore operations. (2) Marine Resources Products shall focus on the sustainable management of living marine resources, through fisheries and mariculture and also in support to marine protected areas. The primary goals of fishery management shall be fishery sustainable ecosystem services, ensuring maximum sustainable yield while rebuilding overexploited stocks. Mariculture management bodies shall provide advice on the assessment of the multi-trophic productivity and on the environmental impact of marine farming. (3) Marine and coastal environment This service shall address the user needs of different domains: sustainable tourism and mariculture, protection of the coasts against erosion and land-based sources of pollution, human and ecosystem health. Products and information shall be required to sustain the development of effective Integrated Coastal Zone Management concepts and decision support systems. (4) Weather, climate and seasonal forecasting This service shall guarantee a robust and reliable supply of quality-controlled marine information on a daily or six-hourly basis. This shall comprise surface fields as boundary conditions as well as ocean observations at surface and ocean modelled information well below the surface. 3. SERVICE ARCHITECTURE CMEMS shall comprise three main service elements. (1) Processing Processing centers shall process from various sets of input data the core products describing the ocean state, in near real time and delayed mode. Processing shall be provided by Thematic Assembly Centres and Monitoring and Forecasting Centres. (a) Thematic Assembly Centres (TACs) shall be mainly focused on the direct processing of in-situ data i.e. for temperature, salinity and biogeochemistry variables and L2 satellite data for several ocean variables such as i.e. sea-surface temperature, ocean colour, sea ice parameters and sea level, dissolved oxygen, optical properties or other biogeochemical components. The outputs from this thematic processing shall be products serving as direct input to further processing by Monitoring and Forecasting centres as well as products for external usage. (b) Monitoring and Forecasting Centres (MFCs) shall provide the three-dimensional description of the ocean state: analyses and forecasts of marine parameters (temperature, salinity, currents, sea ice, sea level, waves and biogeochemistry). There shall be seven MFCs covering the global ocean and the European regional Seas: Global, Arctic, Baltic, North West shelf, Iberic-Biscay-Irish area, Mediterranean Sea, Black Sea. (2) Product Management Product Management shall manage all marine data and products in real-time or delayed mode and shall manage their archives and provide the capacities required for a reliable discovery, viewing, access and download of these data and information at any time by the service operators and the external users; it shall be based on the continuation and update of the current data categories and variables in the catalogue, as well as the information in the service lines. (3) Outreach and training Outreach and training shall provide the users with an easy and efficient access to these data and products, and with opportunities to discover the service (either online of through dedicated training and events), improve their skills in using it and express their requirements and feedbacks. Outreach activities shall be an integrated part of the service in order to provide a direct link to the technical and scientific expertise inherent to the service. Two aspects can be considered: interaction with users and communication. The entrusted entity shall have the dual responsibility for implementing these primary functions and the overall cross-cutting functions needed to ensure an efficient and reliable marine service. Cross-cutting functionalities have three main requirements: (a) integrated operations, to provide a timely and reliable service; (b) product and service quality management, to provide scientifically verified and state-of-the-art information, and high level of quality and continuity of service; (c) continuous service improvement, to be responsive to user requirements. 4. TECHNICAL SERVICE PORTFOLIO CMEMS service shall provide the products free of charge to registered users through an Interactive Catalogue available on the CMEMS web portal. CMEMS shall provide regular and systematic core reference information on the state of the physical and biogeochemical oceans and regional seas. The observations and forecasts produced by the service support all marine applications. CMEMS shall be driven by quality and simplicity: quality of the ocean information provided to users, and simplicity of the access to information. The interactive catalogue shall allow users to select products according to the following criteria: (a) geographical areas: global ocean or regional areas: Arctic Ocean, Baltic Sea, Atlantic-European North West Shelf-Ocean, Atlantic-European South West Shelf-Ocean, Mediterranean Sea, Black Sea; (b) parameters: Temperature, Salinity, Currents, Sea Ice parameters (concentration, edge, drift, thickness, type), Sea Level (SSH, SLA gH, SLA noise), Euphotic zone, mixed layer depth, Wind, Waves, optical water properties, Ocean Chemistry (N, P, Fe, O 2 , Si, NH 4 , RadFlux, PCO 2 , pH), Ocean Biology (Chlorophyll-A, phyto, zoo, primary production); (c) time coverage: forecast, near real time, multi-year, time-invariant products (either from observation or modelling); (d) models or observations (products delivered from model simulation, satellite measurements, in situ observation, or combination of model and observation products); (e) grid type; (f) time span; (g) vertical coverage; (h) processing level; (i) temporal resolution. 5. DATA NEEDS CMEMS shall be based on ocean observations from a variety of sources, including satellite-based instruments (from Sentinels and also essential contributing missions such as Jason Series), in-situ platforms such as surface and sub-surface buoys and floats, and volunteer observing ships. 5.1. Satellites-Based Observation CMEMS shall provide products based on operational satellite. Even more satellite observations shall be used by CMEMS for climatology, reanalysis and validation purposes, from past missions or from satellites that do not deliver data in real-time. The most important types of data used in CMEMS shall be from spectroradiometers (to measure chlorophyll content, organic and mineral content, sea-surface temperature and sea-ice cover), infrared radiometers (to measure sea-surface temperature), microwave radiometers (to measure atmospheric water vapour content, atmospheric water liquid content (clouds), rain rates, sea-ice concentration, type, extent, sea-surface temperature, salinity), altimeters (sea-surface height, ocean surface wind speed, wave height, sea ice), scatterometers (to measure wind speed and heading, rain, sea-ice concentration) and synthetic aperture radars (to measure wind and the surface wave field and ensure sea-ice monitoring). Sentinel-1, Sentinel-3 and Jason-3 space observations shall be fully integrated in CMEMS products and the portfolio shall be enriched with wave data and new biogeochemical products. Sentinel-2 shall be progressively integrated to improve the biogeochemical product portfolio. 5.2. In-Situ Observation CMEMS shall not operate in-situ observing systems and shall collect observations from data providers, mainly from EuroGOOS, JCOMM networks, SeaDataNet and EMODnet.