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.