Please be aware that minor updates to the operational MyOcean 'Global Ocean OSTIA Sea Surface Temperature and Sea Ice Analysis'
product (SST-GLO-SST-L4-NRT-OBSERVATIONS-010-001) will be implemented on Weds 1st May 2013.
These changes will therefore affect SST analyses dated 30 April 2013 onwards.
   
The changes will have no effect on the global open-ocean SST values and will only affect inland seas and lakes where we have
included lake ice in the OSTIA ice field.

Further details of the lake ice changes can be found in the Product User Manual (PUM)

MyOcean is pleased to deliver a New Service Release from 23 April 2013.

This release leads to improvements on products (new products, quality improvements on existing products, better organization of the catalogue…), on service (new download mechanism, improvement on the product visualization…).

Please find here :

o    A detailed notice about this new release

o    The list of products impacted by this release

We sincerely hope these new functionalities will meet your requirements. Should you have any question, please contact the MyOcean Service desk.

We are pleased to inform you that as of Friday April, 5th at least, SEA LEVEL Reprocessed products will be extended to November 21st, 2012. The products (and datasets) concerned by this update are the following:

SEALEVEL_GLO_SLA_L3_RAN_OBSERVATIONS_008_001_b
*dataset-duacs-ran-global-c2-sla-l3
*dataset-duacs-ran-global-j1g-sla-l3
*dataset-duacs-ran-global-j2-sla-l3
*dataset-duacs-ran-global-j2-sla-unfiltered-l3
*dataset-duacs-ran-global-j1g-sla-unfiltered-l3
*dataset-duacs-ran-global-c2-sla-unfiltered-l3

SEALEVEL_BS_SLA_L3_RAN_OBSERVATIONS_008_003_b
*dataset-duacs-ran-blacksea-c2-sla-l3
*dataset-duacs-ran-blacksea-j1g-sla-l3
*dataset-duacs-ran-blacksea-j2-sla-l3
*dataset-duacs-ran-blacksea-c2-sla-unfiltered-l3
*dataset-duacs-ran-blacksea-j1g-sla-unfiltered-l3
*dataset-duacs-ran-blacksea-j2-sla-unfiltered-l3

SEALEVEL_MED_SLA_L3_RAN_OBSERVATIONS_008_002_b
*dataset-duacs-ran-medsea-c2-sla-l3
*dataset-duacs-ran-medsea-j1g-sla-l3
*dataset-duacs-ran-medsea-j2-sla-l3
*dataset-duacs-ran-medsea-c2-sla-unfiltered-l3
*dataset-duacs-ran-medsea-j1g-sla-unfiltered-l3
*dataset-duacs-ran-medsea-j2-sla-unfiltered-l3

Up to now, a lot of data without valid quality control have been excluded from the product INSITU_GLO_NRT_OBSERVATIONS_013_030.
From 11/03/2013, all data will be delivered, whatever the quality control.
Consequently, you will have to use the Quality Check flag associated to each measure to ensure that it is compatible with the usage.
Only the data flagged with 1,2,5 and 8 should be used.

Quality Check flag meanings are :
 O:no_qc_performed
 1:good_data
 2:probably_good_data
 3:bad_data_that_are_potentially_correctable
 4:bad_data
 5:value_changed
 6:not_used
 7:nominal_value
 8:interpolated_value missing_value

Already existing data will be regenerated progressively from 11/03/2013.

Please, be informed that, as from February, 19, 2013, the delivery of the Sea Level products will be improved and the following changes will be implemented:

• The Global NRT products will be updated several times per day in order to include the most recent available OGDR data (called “OGDR on the fly”). For example, if you download files at 15:00 for the day D:

o At the present time, the last date of data that you can get in the last file delivered is ~20:00 of the day D-1.

o As from February 19, the same file will be updated and you will get data until 13:00 of the day D at the best (if OGDR is valid).

All datasets of the following product are concerned:

SEALEVEL_GLO_SLA_L3_NRT_OBSERVATIONS_008_001_a

• All the Sea Level SLA products will be compressed (no double dissemination). When you download files through the MyOcean Web Portal Directgetfile Service:

oAt the present time, you get a zip file containing *.nc files

oAs from February 19, you will get a zip file containing *.nc.gz files

All datasets of the following products are concerned:

                 SEALEVEL_GLO_SLA_L3_NRT_OBSERVATIONS_008_001_a
                 SEALEVEL_BS_SLA_L3_NRT_OBSERVATIONS_008_003_a
                 SEALEVEL_MED_SLA_L3_NRT_OBSERVATIONS_008_002_a
                 SEALEVEL_EUR_SLA_L3_NRT_OBSERVATIONS_008_004_a
                 SEALEVEL_ARC_SLA_L3_NRT_OBSERVATIONS_008_005_a
                 SEALEVEL_GLO_SLA_L3_RAN_OBSERVATIONS_008_001_b
                 SEALEVEL_MED_SLA_L3_RAN_OBSERVATIONS_008_002_b
                 SEALEVEL_BS_SLA_L3_RAN_OBSERVATIONS_008_003_b
                 SEALEVEL_GLO_MDT_L4_REF_OBSERVATIONS_008_013
                 SEALEVEL_GLO_MSS_L4_REF_OBSERVATIONS_008_015
                 SEALEVEL_MED_MDT_L4_REF_OBSERVATIONS_008_014

For more details regarding the changes, see the SLTAC updated Product User Manual .

Please, be informed that, as from Friday 18th of January, SEALEVEL TAC Reprocessed products
will be extended to July 18th, 2012 (instead of April 18th 2012).

Several changes are taken into account:

• Jason-1 is on its geodetic orbit since May 2012:

o    j1n datasets are not updated anymore, the last date available is March 7, 2012.

o    there are new datasets named j1g for Jason-1 on its geodetic orbit starting on June 12, 2012.

• Version D of Jason-2 data are taken into account since June 18, 2012 (impact on j2 datasets). (see information on version D on http://www.aviso.oceanobs.com/en/data/product-information/duacs/presentation/updates.html#c9349 )

We are pleased to announce the improvements of SEALEVEL, OSTIA SST and BLACKSEA products.

• BLACKSEA products

As from December 3th, 2012, products obtained by hydrodynamic and biochemical models will be updated to compensate for the loss of Envisat and Jason-1.

The data will be updated from the 1st April 2012 to the present.

The concerned products are:

BLACKSEA-ANALYSIS-FORECAST-PHYS-007-001-a
BLACKSEA-ANALYSIS-FORECAST-PHYS-007-001-b
BLACKSEA-ANALYSIS-FORECAST-BIO-007-003

• SEALEVEL products

As from December 4th, 2012, the processing of Near Real Time  Cryosat-2 SEA LEVEL products will be improved with:

•    a better tuning of altimeter parameter and correction (backscatter coefficient and thus the Sea State Bias correction)  improving the SLA stability,

•    a new editing process allowing to improve the SLA quality notably in sea ice areas.

You can find information in Labroue S., A. Ollivier, M. Guibbaud, F. Boy, N. Picot, P. Féménias,“Quality assessment of Cryosat-2 altimetric system over ocean”, OSTST 2012 in Venice.

The impacted products are:

SEALEVEL_GLO_SLA_L3_NRT_OBSERVATIONS_008_001_a *dataset-duacs-nrt-global-c2-sla-l3
SEALEVEL_BS_SLA_L3_NRT_OBSERVATIONS_008_003_a *dataset-duacs-nrt-blacksea-c2-sla-l3
SEALEVEL_MED_SLA_L3_NRT_OBSERVATIONS_008_002_a *dataset-duacs-nrt-medsea-c2-sla-l3
SEALEVEL_ARC_SLA_L3_NRT_OBSERVATIONS_008_002_a *dataset-duacs-nrt-arctic-c2-sla-l3
SEALEVEL_EUR_SLA_L3_NRT_OBSERVATIONS_008_002_a *dataset-duacs-nrt-europe-c2-sla-l3

• OSTIA SST product

We have been working on some updates to the MyOcean Global Ocean OSTIA Sea Surface Temperature and Sea Ice Analysis product which will become operational on or after the January 17th, 2013.

These changes will lead to global and regional accuracy improvements in the product. The ability of the SST analysis to resolve small scale ocean features will also be improved.

The main changes responsible for the improvements are:

•    An update to the background error covariance estimates within the OSTIA system.

•    The use of a subset of MetOp AVHRR data together with the in-situ data as a reference in the bias correction of satellite data used in the SST analysis.

Product format will remain unchanged with the same file sizes, grid specification and metadata.

 The affected products are:

SST-GLO-SST-L4-NRT-OBSERVATIONS-010-001-a
SST-GLO-SSTA-L4-NRT-OBSERVATIONS-010-001-b
SST-GLO-SSTA-L4-NRT-OBSERVATIONS-010-001-c

We are pleased to announce that new release of MyOcean Catalogue is now available.

This release leads to few products improvements and concerns following product groups:

• Arctic Ocean
• Baltic Sea
• Mediterranean Sea
• Ocean Colour
• Sea Surface Temperature
• Sea ice
• In Situ

The release will take place on Monday 12th November 2012.

Please take a look at the “ Transition document ”:

• It details the changes per product
• It details how to update your downloading scripts (when the product has been changed by the release)

Both product versions (“old” and “new” release) will be available for a transition period by around 3 weeks after the release.
The precise transition period per product is given in the “transition document”.
For users using scripts, we therefore strongly recommend to update the scripts during the transition period, before the old version is switched off.

Would you experience any problems, please contact the MyOcean Service Desk.

We are pleased to inform you as of Friday 28th of September, SEALEVEL TAC Reprocessed products

will be extended to April 18th, 2012 (instead of February 8th 2012).

Note that the mission Cryosat-2 is added.

We are pleased to inform you that the SEALEVEL-TAC NearRealTime Jason-2 products
take into account since the 2nd of August the altimetric standards IGDR/OGDR version “D” ( instead of version “C”).

The SLTAC products concerned are the SLA NRT which the production date (the third one in the filename) is older than  2012/08/01:
SEALEVEL_GLO_SLA_L3_NRT_OBSERVATIONS_008_001_a
SEALEVEL_MED_SLA_L3_NRT_OBSERVATION_008_002_a
SEALEVEL_BS_SLA_L3_NRT_OBSERVATIONS_008_003_a
SEALEVEL_EUR_SLA_L3_OBSERVATIONS_008_004_a
SEALEVEL_ARC_SLA_L3_OBSERVATIONS_008_005_a

The nomenclature of files is unchanged.

SLTAC ensures a transition as seamless as possible between the standards in order to minimize the impact of this change.
For more details regarding the changes, see the SLTAC updated Product User Manual:  MyO315_pum-008-001-005 .  

Please note that this Product User Manual is a newer version than the one in the catalogue online.

The PUM in the catalogue online will be updated later in the fall.

Jason-1 geodetic track sea level anomaly data for assimilation is implemented in addition to the existing Jason-2 and Cryosat2 data sources into the Arctic forecast system since the 2012-06-28 analysis.

The implementation of this new data will most likely give a denser and more accurate sea level data field, which is expected to improve the product

.

We are pleased to inform you as of Monday 25th of June at last, SEALEVEL TAC Reprocessed products will be extended  to February 8th, 2012 (instead of December  7th, 2011).

The concerned products (and datasets) are listed in the Pdf joined file : MyO263_SL_TAC_Extension.pdf

The following products have been upgraded:
ARCTIC_ANALYSIS_FORECAST_PHYS_002_001_a
ARCTIC_ANALYSIS_FORECAST_BIO_002_004

The only visible change is that the daily forecast updates now extend to +9 days ahead every day.
This is in contrast to the previous routine where the same weekly 10-day forecast was updated daily.
The assimilation schedule is still weekly.

At the same time, the weekly assimilation schedule has been revised in order to access more recent
observations than previously.
The analysis is now run on Thursdays (in contrast to Tuesdays previously) and the analysis time is 3 days
prior to Thursday (in contrast to 7 days previously).

Note that this change is transparent to you, but is expected to significantly improve the quality of the forecasts.

From Tuesday 29th of May, the following re-processed products have been extended to December 7th, 2011 (instead of September 28th, 2011):

SEALEVEL_GLO_SLA_L3_RAN_OBSERVATIONS_008_001_b
SEALEVEL_MED_SLA_L3_RAN_OBSERVATIONS_008_002_b
SEALEVEL_BS_SLA_L3_RAN_OBSERVATIONS_008_003_b

Jason-1 has been re-integrated in the SEALEVEL TAC NRT system since May 25th.
Indeed, Jason-1 is now on its geodetic orbit.

Therefore, these events lead to:
-    A dissemination of Jason-1 SL-TAC data for its geodetic orbit with a change in the nomenclature of the datasets and files: "j1g".
-    For the Jason-1 geodetic orbit, no mean profile can be used. The Mean Sea Surface (MSS_CNES_CLS11) is used instead.
-    Jason-1 along-track files for its repeat orbit are available until March 3rd, 2012.

The following products take into account the new Jason-1 orbit :
SEALEVEL_GLO_SLA_L3_NRT_OBSERVATIONS_008_001_a (dataset-duacs-nrt-global-j1g-sla-l3)
SEALEVEL_MED_SLA_L3_NRT_OBSERVATION_008_002_a (dataset-duacs-nrt-medsea- j1g-sla-l3)
SEALEVEL_BS_SLA_L3_NRT_OBSERVATIONS_008_003_a (dataset-duacs-nrt-blacksea- j1g-sla-l3)
SEALEVEL_EUR_SLA_L3_OBSERVATIONS_008_004 (dataset-duacs-nrt-europe- j1g-sla-l3)
SEALEVEL_ARC_SLA_L3_OBSERVATIONS_008_005 (dataset-duacs-nrt-arctic- j1g-sla-l3)

The quality of the following products has been improved on May 8th 2012:

GLOBAL_ANALYSIS_FORECAST_PHYS_001_001_c
GLOBAL_FORECAST_PHYS_001_001_d

Cryosat-2 track sea level anomaly data assimilation has been implemented in addition to assimilation of Jason-1, Jason-2 and Envisat data. This improvement compensates the current loss of Envisat and Jason-1 data.

Some improvements to the MyOcean In Situ system have become operational on May 3 2012.
CORA3, a comprehensive and qualified Ocean In Situ dataset of temperature and salinity profiles from 1990 to 2010, has been taken into account for the Global Ocean In-situ observation product (yearly delivered in delayed mode).
Data is available up to 2010 (instead of up to 2007 previously).
File format remains unchanged.

Some improvements to the MyOcean North West Shelf system have become operational on March 28 2012.
These changes lead to quality improvements in the model’s tidal harmonics as well as the chlorophyll, nutrients, attenuation and surface temperature (SST) fields.

Users should be aware that the model bathymetry has also been updated as part of this change which was necessary to improve slope currents and tidal harmonics. This bathymetry change mean that the product mask have a small number of changes at depth with some near-bed points changing from sea to land points and vice-versa. Products otherwise remain unchanged with the same file sizes, grid specification and metadata.

Some improvements to the MyOcean Arctic system have become operational on March 6 2012. 
Implementation of Cryosat-2 track sea level anomaly data for assimilation in addition to the existing Jason-1, Jason-2 and Envisat data sources into the ARC-MFC system, that is, product  ARCTIC_ANALYSIS_FORECAST_PHYS_002_001_a has been performed on March 6 2012. Adding these data to the existing assimilation data sources will most likely give a denser and more accurate data field.

The quality assessment is an important activity in MyOcean Production Centres.

In each MyOcean Production Centre, the scientific assessment (performed successively on the V1 and V2 MyOcean systems before operations) as well as the real time scientific routine monitoring, allowed the scientific teams to better evaluate the quality and the accuracy of the products.

Most of the validation procedure are based on in-situ data and some satellite data delivered by the Thematic Assembly Centres (Sea Level TAC, Ocean Colour TAC, Sea Surface Temperature TAC, Sea Ice TAC and In Situ TAC).

Moreover, a dedicated task team called the "Product Quality Working Group" has been organizing among the Production Centres a consistent estimation of the relevant accuracy levels for most of the MyOcean products of the catalogue.

These numbers are provided here CAL/VAL ACCURACY NUMBERS March 18th 2012 .

They are essentially raised by statistics on comparisons with reference information on the ocean dynamics. In parallel, a particular effort has been made by this team :

• to inform users on the scientific performance of the MyOcean production systems,
  
• to describe their components
  
• to present the way the "CalVal" activities are carried on.

These informations are summarized in Quality Information Documents (QuIDs)  for most of the MyOcean Products (access the QuIDs through online documentation in the catalogue).

Since March15th, MyOcean catalogue include two brand new reanalysis products:

Few products have changed:

* Update on Sea Level products linked to the new altimeter Cryosat
* Longer period of time for the reanalysis of Global and Arctic Oceans
* Update of the SST Global Ocean products. (Please note : Should you use scripts, these changes will automatically impact them. To let you adapt your scripts, a double diffusion of the current and new SST products will be done from March 15th until May 1st 2012).

For more details, download the following document: MyOcean Product Changes for the 15th March 2012 release

We are preparing a new release of MyOcean products and services.  To ensure continuity of service and support, the original release date of Monday 19th December has been moved to January.

The new date for the release is now Tuesday 10th January 2012 .

 
1. Some of our products will be changing with the new release. Please take a look at our transition document, in which you will find high level information including dataset name changes and details of sample files allowing you to prepare for the next MyOcean phase. Jan.5th 2012 - Products upgrades and Samples - Release Jan.10th 2012

Please note that if you use scripts to download products there may be an impact on your current process and this may require you to update scripts.

Current and changed products will be available in parallel for a period of around 6 weeks  after the release date until beginning of March 2012 (Exact dates  to be confirmed).

 Therefore, if required, you will need to update your scripts within this period. This will ensure you get the correct versions of the products and that your scripts do not fail after the old versions of the products are switched off.

2. MyOcean also proposes 22 new products, hereby listed : MyOcean New Products for the 10th Jan 2012 release

If you experience any problems, please contact the Service desk myocean
 

Since the MyOcean Web portal upgrade in December 2010, offering more functionality for users, the MyOcean Service has gone through regular improvement phases.
 

The next one will take place on July, 5th 2011. From this date, MyOcean will offer:  
   
         -  Upgrades to existing products
          - New products ( List of new MyOcean products from July 5th 2011 )

New and upgraded products will be available for you to download from 5th July 2011.
 
In order to help you switch over to the upgraded products, MyOcean has arranged a transition period for most of the products.
Current and upgraded versions of these products will be produced in parallel until mid-September 2011 (allowing a 2 months transition period).A detailed list of product name changes, product upgrades and sample file links can be downloaded from here : MyOcean products upgrade, samples and transition period July 5th 2011

Some users have noticed high salinities in the North and Celtic seas, and fresh anomalies downstream of the Amazon, North of Venezuela and Guyana.On 29/06/2011, the North Atlantic and Mediterranean zoom (1/12°) of the GLOBAL MyOcean analysis and forecasting system configuration will be updated in order to improve scientific data quality.

In order to provide improvement in data quality, we are going to perform a series of modifications to the  system configuration.
The product concerned is the GLOBAL-ANALYSIS-FORECAST-PHYS-001-001-b (ie North Atlantic, Tropical Atlantic and Mediterranean regional product)

What will change :

On 29/06/2011, new data updated in time series will come from the new operational system version. Consequently, this change will introduce a positive qualitative scientific leap in available time series. Practically, in time series, analysis data before 14/06/2011 will come from current configuration whereas analysis and forecasts data starting from 15/06/2011 will come from the new configuration.

Important note: no changes in product name and address, neither on time series length nor product format. It will be transparent for your applications.

 

The accuracy of the global 3D temperature (left) and salinity (right) fields is evaluated calculating their difference (quadratic errors) with synchronous temperature and salinity observation profiles from in-situ data. The closer to zero the curve is, the better it is, as STREAM 1 performance (black curves) shows compared to the past (red curves).

• The STREAM 1 errors (black curves) are significantly reduced with respect to previous product versions (red curves) over the globe and over the whole 2007-2010 period for which the monitoring and forecasting system has been "trained". The accuracy improvements reach 0.2°C and 0.02 psu respectively for temperature and salinity. The blue and green curve illustrate the benefit of using V1 analyses instead of a climatology. The temperature and salinity errors over the 0-500m layer range from two thirds to half that of the climatology in most regions.
• In general the STREAM 1 global monitoring and forecasting system displays high-level performance and stability for all oceanic variables, and is superior to V0 in many aspects. Sea ice realism is also improved as illustrated here in the Antarctic. The improvements of STREAM 1 include the use of a recent version of NEMO with high frequency atmospheric forcings (3-hourly) and a new rheology for sea ice. The STREAM 1 data assimilation scheme applies an incremental analysis update of T, S, U, V and SSH after the SAM2 analysis, and an additional seasonal bias correction for Temperature and Salinity.

Stream 1 models for sea ice extent concentration and drift (coloured curves on the right picture) have improved the representation of real ice fronts compared to the former version (black curve on the left picture) thanks to a better data assimilation algorithm.
 

• Model improvements relevant for ice edge: Implementation of HYCOM community upgrades (V2.1 to V2.2)
• Assimilation improvements: Smooth localisation /Stochastic -> deterministic scheme/Assimilation of gridded SLA -> track SLA

Old (left) and new (right) Mean Sea Level Anomalies MSLA dataset for day 04/02/2009 in Southern hemisphere highlighting the better spatial coverage in high latitudes (white zone: no coverage).

• The reference surface (or mean profiles) used for SLA computation was improved with the Stream 1 version, taking advantage of the longer temporal coverage and combining twin missions as ERS2/Envisat or Topex-Poseidon/Jason1.
• Improved quality of the mean profiles, combined with higher quality of the altimeter measurement and processing, allowed us to improve the spatial coverage of the data specially in high latitude areas and coastal areas, as illustrated.
   

Stream1 global monitoring and forecasting system (in green) displays high level of performance and stability for oceanic variables, and is superior to the old version (in grey). An example is sea Ice extent, as illustrated here in the Antarctic where prediction (in green) is closer to observation (at the date) than with previous models (in grey).

• The improvements of Stream1 include the use of a recent version of NEMO with high frequency atmospheric forcings (3-hourly) and a new rheology for sea ice.
• The Stream1 data assimilation scheme applies an incremental analysis update of T, S, U, V and SSH after the SAM2 analysis, and an additional seasonal bias correction for T and S.