Operational oceanography in support to indicator reporting

Operational Oceanography (OO) has now emerged to a stage that allows the design,
development and execution of marine core services tailored to user requirements. As such it is also
feasible to provide routine production of environmental and climate indicators. Indicators are
synthetic indices of environmental changes at various temporal and spatial scales. In this paper we
outline the possible contribution and strengthening of existing indicator reporting based on OO
products followed by a discussion of the relevance of such improved reporting for marine
environmental policy implementation and regulation. In particular, it capitalizes on the main
achievements of the Marine Environment and Security of the European Area (MERSEA) project,
the outcome of a European Marine Monitoring and Assessment (EMMA) workshop on the
connection between operational oceanography and the European Marine Strategy (EMS) Directive
and the regular European Environmental Agency (EEA) assessment reports.

Financial support for our work was provided by the EU project
15 MERSEA (Marine Environment and Security for the European Area, Contract number:
SIP3-CT-2003-502885), BOSS4GMES (Building Operational Sustainable Services for GMES,
contract number: FP6-2005-SPACE-1-030966) and by the European Topic Center for Water
(ETC-W).

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