MyOcean2  IS A PROJECT,

PROVIDING PRODUCTS and A FREE SERVICE FOR ALL MARINE APPLICATIONS.

The MyOcean project , which was undertaken in 2009, came to an end on 31 March 2012 without any break in service, given the service continuity is ensured by the MyOcean2 project with a 2-year mandate from the European Commission.

• The MyOcean2 response to User needs

Both Public and Private users need response to today's climate and marine challenges.

MyOcean2 is a component of the future "GMES Marine Service". It supports and contributes to the data and information tools :

• for the EU Integrated Maritime Policy, and in particular for marine environment assessment (Marine Strategy) and maritime safety.
• for the National Agencies of the EU (Pollution combat, Coastal Environment, Water Quality, Maritime Safety, Renewable Energies...)
• for the regional sea conventions on marine environment protection.

And in a general way, by continuing and improving the service delivered by MyOcean (2009-2012), MyOcean2 delivers information service to any user related to Maritime Safety, Marine and Coastal Environment, Marine Resources, and Weather, Climate and Seasonal Forecasting activities.

• The MyOcean2 offer

MyOcean Service gives a free access and provides state-of-the-art information available on the Global Ocean (worldwide coverage) and on European seas, based on the combination of space and in situ observations, and their assimilation into 4D models (including theTime frame) such as: Temperature, salinity, currents, sea ice, sea level, wind and biogeochemical parameters (More on MyOcean Catalogue)

MyOcean products are available for users of all marine applications in order to add value to their own operational systems or to contribute to their R&D programs. It is available:

•To anyone
•Anywhere (the service covers the oceans all over the globe)
•At any depth (models give access to a 3D depiction)
•At anytime (in real time, with short term forecast, and also past situations for at least the last 25 years)

The Global ocean and the European seas are monitored with an eddy-resolving capacity, based on assimilation of space and in situ data into 3D models, representing the physical state, the ice and the ecosystems of the ocean; in the past (25 years), in real-time and in the future (1-2 weeks). The high-quality products rely on the aggregation of European modelling tools and the scientific methodology is produced through a strong cross-fertilization between operational and research communities.

Observations, model-based data, and added-value products are generated and enhanced thanks to dedicated expertise – by 11production units :

* 4  Thematic Assembly Centers, each of them dealing with a specific set of observation data:

SEA LEVEL - OCEAN COLOR- SEA ICE and WIND (and SST) - IN SITU

* 7Monitoring and Forecasting Centers to serve : the Global Ocean, the Arctic area, the Baltic Sea, the Atlantic North-West shelves area, the Atlantic Iberian-Biscay-Ireland area, the Mediterranean Sea and the Black Sea.

• The MyOcean2 project

MyOcean2 is a 30-month project granted by the European Commission within the GMES program (7th Framework Program for European Research and Development).

As an FP7 project, MyOcean2 is pre-operational and is focussed on the transition from demonstration to operations as a first priority.

MyOcean involves 59 partners from 28 countries: major centres in Europe involved in ocean operational monitoring & forecasting and partners from the European maritime community. 

Most components of MyOcean are operated at National level or in partnership with other European initiatives. However, duplication of effort still exists today, and standards are heterogeneous.

MyOcean and MyOcean2 push further the evolution towards a coordinated effort, avoiding unnecessary duplication, and create large economies of scale, identifying critical paths to be increase the service robustness.

This leads to several transverse axes:

1. From global to regions, making a coordinated and interlinked network that covers the whole globe with enhanced capacity for the European waters,
2. From research to operations, fostering the development of innovation that will ensure the scientific quality of the products and services,
3. Covering the full range of marine disciplines from observations to modelling, from monitoring to assimilation and forecasting, from short term forecast to long term hindcast or reanalysis, from physical to biogeochemical parameters, from large global scales to very high frequency local signals,
4. From local science skills to coordinated expertise and standards, using common tools such as Nucleus for European Modelling of the Ocean/Oceanic General Circulation Model (NEMO OGCM) or such as advanced ocean data assimilation methodologies and product quality verification methodologies (Global Ocean Data Assimilation /GODAE Metrics).
   

• Scientific excellence and Users requirements are two MyOcean2 key-drivers.

MyOcean2 information and service will evolve continuously  to better address user needs:  Internal user-driven scientific and technical R&D activities, as well as the integration of results and methods developed externally, contribute to this evolution. 

The user community involvement in MyOcean2 ensures that the products and services are as close as possible to the leading edge of current knowledge. Some users are volunteers within MyOcean, to demonstrate and assess products& services value, to ensure relevancy between the MyOcean products & services and the users’ needs for a wide range of applications (More on the User-driven approach).

This involvement also guarantees a long term sustainability of MyOcean products and services.

Thanks to this community and to the commitments within networks like EuroGOOS, MyOcean significantly contributes to the environmental information and allows key-users to independently and reliably evaluate their policy response: European Agencies such as EEA (European Environment Agency) and EMSA (European Maritime Safety Agency), the Member States service providers (Meteorological Agencies, National coast guards ...), the Intergovernmental bodies or their members like OSPAR (The OSLO-PARIS commissions are the mechanism by which fifteen Governments of the western coasts and catchments of Europe, together with the European Community, cooperate to protect the marine environment of the North-East Atlantic) and like HELCOM (The Helsinki Commission works to protect the marine environment of the Baltic Sea from all sources of pollution through intergovernmental co-operation between Denmark, Estonia, the European Community, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia and Sweden).

• Towards a European Ocean Monitoring Service

MyOcean2 will address the sustainability of its service provision beyond 2014. For this purpose, a dedicated European structure, the European Centre for Ocean Monitoring and Forecasting (ECOMF), will be designed and set up.