Chapter 19
MERSEA: DEVELOPMENT OF A EUROPEAN
OCEAN MONITORING AND FORECASTING
SYSTEM
Ocean and Marine Applications for GMES
Yves Desaubies
Laboratoire d'Océanographie Spatiale, IFREMER, Plouzané, France
Abstract:
The strategic objective of the MERSEA Integrated Project is to provide an
integrated service of global and regional ocean monitoring and forecasting to
intermediate users and policy makers in support of safe and efficient offshore
activities, environmental management, security, and sustainable use of marine
resources. Thus MERSEA objectives are very close to those of GODAE, to which
the project federates the European contribution. As it is still in its initial phase,
this chapter does not present results yet, but aims to outline the scope and
work plan of the project.
Keywords:
Mersea, GMES, global monitoring, operational oceanography
1.
Introduction
The MERSEA Integrated Project is funded by the EU Commission to
develop the ocean and marine applications component of the future GMES
system
1 . The GMES system is being developed to fulfill the requirements of
the EU for independent global information services in support of policy
making and sustainable economic development. GMES addresses also such
issues as risk and conflict prevention, or the negotiation and monitoring of
treaties and conventions.
The concept of GMES is to provide monitoring and operational services
for the global environment. The best established and developed systems are
the National Weather Services (NWS) for the atmosphere, which are truly
1 GMES: Global Monitoring for the Environment and Security, a joint initiative of the EU and
the European Space Agency
449
E. P. Chassignet and J. Verron (eds.), Ocean Weather Forecasting, 449-453.
© 2006 Springer. Printed in the Netherlands.