The technologies developed will expand our knowledge of the ocean’s interconnected systems and provide tangible benefits to the industries that rely on them, such as fisheries and aquaculture. The data generated will also support conservation initiatives and provide vital information to policy makers. The future impact of these valuable technologies relies on their accessibility. Therefore, TechOceanS technology pilots will be low-cost and place minimal demands on existing infrastructure, allowing them to be made available for use by all countries regardless of resources. TechOceanS will also work with the IOC-UNESCO to develop “ocean best practices” standards for training and monitoring of metrology and ocean systems.

'''DEFINITION''' The global yearly ocean CO2 sink represents the ocean uptake of CO2 from the atmosphere computed over the whole ocean. It is expressed in PgC per year. The ocean monitoring index is presented for the period 1985 to year-1. The yearly estimate of the ocean CO2 sink corresponds to the mean of a 100-member ensemble of CO2 flux estimates (Chau et al. 2022). The range of an estimate with the associated uncertainty is then defined by the empirical 68% interval computed from the ensemble. '''CONTEXT''' Since the onset of the industrial era in 1750, the atmospheric CO2 concentration has increased from about 277±3 ppm (Joos and Spahni, 2008) to 412.44±0.1 ppm in 2020 (Dlugokencky and Tans, 2020). By 2011, the ocean had absorbed approximately 28 ± 5% of all anthropogenic CO2 emissions, thus providing negative feedback to global warming and climate change (Ciais et al., 2013). The ocean CO2 sink is evaluated every year as part of the Global Carbon Budget (Friedlingstein et al. 2022). The uptake of CO2 occurs primarily in response to increasing atmospheric levels. The global flux is characterized by a significant variability on interannual to decadal time scales largely in response to natural climate variability (e.g., ENSO) (Friedlingstein et al. 2022, Chau et al. 2022). '''CMEMS KEY FINDINGS''' The rate of change of the integrated yearly surface downward flux has increased by 0.04±0.01e-1 PgC/yr2 over the period 1985 to year-1. The yearly flux time series shows a plateau in the 90s followed by an increase since 2000 with a growth rate of 0.06±0.04e-1 PgC/yr2. In 2021 (resp. 2020), the global ocean CO2 sink was 2.41±0.13 (resp. 2.50±0.12) PgC/yr. The average over the full period is 1.61±0.10 PgC/yr with an interannual variability (temporal standard deviation) of 0.46 PgC/yr. In order to compare these fluxes to Friedlingstein et al. (2022), the estimate of preindustrial outgassing of riverine carbon of 0.61 PgC/yr, which is in between the estimate by Jacobson et al. (2007) (0.45±0.18 PgC/yr) and the one by Resplandy et al. (2018) (0.78±0.41 PgC/yr) needs to be added. A full discussion regarding this OMI can be found in section 2.10 of the Ocean State Report 4 (Gehlen et al., 2020) and in Chau et al. (2022). '''DOI (product):''' https://doi.org/10.48670/moi-00223

NAUTILOS, a Horizon 2020 Innovation Action project funded under EU’s the Future of Seas and Oceans Flagship Initiative, aims to fill in marine observation and modelling gaps for biogeochemical, biological and deep ocean physics essential ocean variables and micro-/nano-plastics, by developing a new generation of cost-effective sensors and samplers, their integration within observing platforms and deployment in large-scale demonstrations in European seas. The principles underlying NAUTILOS are those of the development, integration, validation and demonstration of new cutting-edge technologies with regards to sensors, interoperability and embedding skills. The development is always guided by the objectives of scalability, modularity, cost-effectiveness, and open-source availability of software products produced. Bringing together 21 entities from 11 European countries with multidisciplinary expertise, NAUTILOS has the fundamental aim to complement and expand current European observation tools and services, to obtain a collection of data at a much higher spatial resolution, temporal regularity and length than currently available at the European scale, and to further enable and democratize the monitoring of the marine environment to both traditional and non-traditional data users.

The Ocean Colour Climate Change Initiative project aims to: Develop and validate algorithms to meet the Ocean Colour GCOS ECV requirements for consistent, stable, error-characterized global satellite data products from multi-sensor data archives. Produce and validate, within an R&D context, the most complete and consistent possible time series of multi-sensor global satellite data products for climate research and modelling. Optimize the impact of MERIS data on climate data records. Generate complete specifications for an operational production system. Strengthen inter-disciplinary cooperation between international Earth observation, climate research and modelling communities, in pursuit of scientific excellence. The ESA OC CCI project is following a data reprocessing paradigm of regular re-processings utilising on-going research and developments in atmospheric correction, in-water algorithms, data merging techniques and bias correction. This requires flexibility and rapid turn-around of processing of extensive ocean colour datasets from a number of ESA and NASA missions to both trial new algorithms and methods and undertake the complete data set production. Read more about the Ocean Colour project on ESA's project website. https://climate.esa.int/en/projects/ocean-colour/.

'''DEFINITION''' The Mediterranean water mass formation rates are evaluated in 4 areas as defined in the Ocean State Report issue 2 (OSR2, von Schuckmann et al., 2018) section 3.4 (Simoncelli and Pinardi, 2018): (1) the Gulf of Lions for the Western Mediterranean Deep Waters (WMDW); (2) the Southern Adriatic Sea Pit for the Eastern Mediterranean Deep Waters (EMDW); (3) the Cretan Sea for Cretan Intermediate Waters (CIW) and Cretan Deep Waters (CDW); (4) the Rhodes Gyre, the area of formation of the so-called Levantine Intermediate Waters (LIW) and Levantine Deep Waters (LDW). Annual water mass formation rates have been computed using daily mixed layer depth estimates (density criteria Δσ = 0.01 kg/m3, 10 m reference level) considering the annual maximum volume of water above mixed layer depth with potential density within or higher the specific thresholds specified in Table 1 then divided by seconds per year. Annual mean values are provided using the Mediterranean 1/24o eddy resolving reanalysis (Escudier et al. 2020, 2021). Time spans from 1987 to the year preceding the current one [-1Y], operationally extended yearly. '''CONTEXT''' The formation of intermediate and deep water masses is one of the most important processes occurring in the Mediterranean Sea, being a component of its general overturning circulation. This circulation varies at interannual and multidecadal time scales and it is composed of an upper zonal cell (Zonal Overturning Circulation) and two main meridional cells in the western and eastern Mediterranean (Pinardi and Masetti 2000). The objective is to monitor the main water mass formation events using the eddy resolving Mediterranean Sea Reanalysis (MEDSEA_MULTIYEAR_PHY_006_004, Escudier et al. 2020, 2021) and considering Pinardi et al. (2015) and Simoncelli and Pinardi (2018) as references for the methodology. The Mediterranean Sea Reanalysis can reproduce both Eastern Mediterranean Transient and Western Mediterranean Transition phenomena and catches the principal water mass formation events reported in the literature. This will permit constant monitoring of the open ocean deep convection process in the Mediterranean Sea and a better understanding of the multiple drivers of the general overturning circulation at interannual and multidecadal time scales. Deep and intermediate water formation events reveal themselves by a deep mixed layer depth distribution in four Mediterranean areas: Gulf of Lions, Southern Adriatic Sea Pit, Cretan Sea and Rhodes Gyre. '''KEY FINDINGS''' The Western Mediterranean Deep Water (WMDW) formation events in the Gulf of Lion appear to be larger after 1999 consistently with Schroeder et al. (2006, 2008) related to the Eastern Mediterranean Transient event. This modification of WMDW after 2005 has been called Western Mediterranean Transition. WMDW formation events are consistent with Somot et al. (2016) and the event in 2009 is also reported in Houpert et al. (2016). The Eastern Mediterranean Deep Water (EMDW) formation in the Southern Adriatic Pit region displays a period of water mass formation between 1988 and 1993, in agreement with Pinardi et al. (2015), in 1996, 1999 and 2000 as documented by Manca et al. (2002). Weak deep water formation in winter 2006 is confirmed by observations in Vilibić and Šantić (2008). An intense deep water formation event is detected in 2012-2013 (Gačić et al., 2014). Last years are characterized by large events starting from 2017 (Mihanovic et al., 2021). Cretan Intermediate Water formation rates present larger peaks between 1989 and 1993 with the ones in 1992 and 1993 composing the Eastern Mediterranean Transient phenomena. The Cretan Deep Water formed in 1992 and 1993 is characterized by the highest densities of the entire period in accordance with Velaoras et al. (2014). The Levantine Deep Water formation rate in the Rhode Gyre region presents the largest values between 1992 and 1993 in agreement with Kontoyiannis et al. (1999). '''DOI (product):''' https://doi.org/10.48670/mds-00318

This dataset provides extreme waves (Hs: significant wave height, Hb:breaking wave height, a proxy of the wave energy flux) simulated with the WWIII model, and extracted along global coastlines. Two simulations, including or not Tropical Cyclones (TCs) in the forcing wind field, are provided.

'''DEFINITION''' The Strong Wave Incidence index is proposed to quantify the variability of strong wave conditions in the Iberia-Biscay-Ireland regional seas. The anomaly of exceeding a threshold of Significant Wave Height is used to characterize the wave behavior. A sensitivity test of the threshold has been performed evaluating the differences using several ones (percentiles 75, 80, 85, 90, and 95). From this indicator, it has been chosen the 90th percentile as the most representative, coinciding with the state-of-the-art. Two Copernicus Marine products are used to compute the Strong Wave Incidence index: * IBI-WAV-MYP: '''IBI_MULTIYEAR_WAV_005_006''' * IBI-WAV-NRT: '''IBI_ANALYSISFORECAST_WAV_005_005''' The Strong Wave Incidence index (SWI) is defined as the difference between the climatic frequency of exceedance (Fclim) and the observational frequency of exceedance (Fobs) of the threshold defined by the 90th percentile (ThP90) of Significant Wave Height (SWH) computed on a monthly basis from hourly data of IBI-WAV-MYP product: SWI = Fobs(SWH > ThP90) – Fclim(SWH > ThP90) Since the Strong Wave Incidence index is defined as a difference of a climatic mean and an observed value, it can be considered an anomaly. Such index represents the percentage that the stormy conditions have occurred above/below the climatic average. Thus, positive/negative values indicate the percentage of hourly data that exceed the threshold above/below the climatic average, respectively. '''CONTEXT''' Ocean waves have a high relevance over the coastal ecosystems and human activities. Extreme wave events can entail severe impacts over human infrastructures and coastal dynamics. However, the incidence of severe (90th percentile) wave events also have valuable relevance affecting the development of human activities and coastal environments. The Strong Wave Incidence index based on the Copernicus Marine regional analysis and reanalysis product provides information on the frequency of severe wave events. The IBI-MFC covers the Europe’s Atlantic coast in a region bounded by the 26ºN and 56ºN parallels, and the 19ºW and 5ºE meridians. The western European coast is located at the end of the long fetch of the subpolar North Atlantic (Mørk et al., 2010), one of the world’s greatest wave generating regions (Folley, 2017). Several studies have analyzed changes of the ocean wave variability in the North Atlantic Ocean (Bacon and Carter, 1991; Kushnir et al., 1997; WASA Group, 1998; Bauer, 2001; Wang and Swail, 2004; Dupuis et al., 2006; Wolf and Woolf, 2006; Dodet et al., 2010; Young et al., 2011; Young and Ribal, 2019). The observed variability is composed of fluctuations ranging from the weather scale to the seasonal scale, together with long-term fluctuations on interannual to decadal scales associated with large-scale climate oscillations. Since the ocean surface state is mainly driven by wind stresses, part of this variability in Iberia-Biscay-Ireland region is connected to the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) index (Bacon and Carter, 1991; Hurrell, 1995; Bouws et al., 1996, Bauer, 2001; Woolf et al., 2002; Tsimplis et al., 2005; Gleeson et al., 2017). However, later studies have quantified the relationships between the wave climate and other atmospheric climate modes such as the East Atlantic pattern, the Arctic Oscillation pattern, the East Atlantic Western Russian pattern and the Scandinavian pattern (Izaguirre et al., 2011, Martínez-Asensio et al., 2016). The Strong Wave Incidence index provides information on incidence of stormy events in four monitoring regions in the IBI domain. The selected monitoring regions (Figure 1.A) are aimed to provide a summarized view of the diverse climatic conditions in the IBI regional domain: Wav1 region monitors the influence of stormy conditions in the West coast of Iberian Peninsula, Wav2 region is devoted to monitor the variability of stormy conditions in the Bay of Biscay, Wav3 region is focused in the northern half of IBI domain, this region is strongly affected by the storms transported by the subpolar front, and Wav4 is focused in the influence of marine storms in the North-East African Coast, the Gulf of Cadiz and Canary Islands. More details and a full scientific evaluation can be found in the CMEMS Ocean State report (Pascual et al., 2020). '''CMEMS KEY FINDINGS''' The trend analysis of the SWI index for the period 1980–2024 shows statistically significant trends (at the 99% confidence level) in wave incidence, with an increase of at least 0.05 percentage points per year in regions WAV1, WAV3, and WAV4. The analysis of the historical period, based on reanalysis data, highlights the major wave events recorded in each monitoring region. In region WAV1 (panel B), the maximum wave event occurred in February 2014, resulting in a 28% increase in strong wave conditions. In region WAV2 (panel C), two notable wave events were identified in November 2009 and February 2014, with increases of 16–18% in strong wave conditions. Similarly, in region WAV3 (panel D), a major event occurred in February 2014, marking one of the most intense events in the region with a 20% increase in storm wave conditions. Additionally, a comparable storm affected the region two months earlier, in December 2013. In region WAV4 (panel E), the most extreme event took place in January 1996, producing a 25% increase in strong wave conditions. Although each monitoring region is generally affected by independent wave events, the analysis reveals several historical events with above-average wave activity that propagated across multiple regions: November–December 2010 (WAV3 and WAV2), February 2014 (WAV1, WAV2, and WAV3), and February–March 2018 (WAV1 and WAV4). The analysis of the near-real-time (NRT) period (from January 2024 onward) identifies a significant event in February 2024 that impacted regions WAV1 and WAV4, resulting in increases of 20% and 15% in strong wave conditions, respectively. For region WAV4, this event represents the second most intense event recorded in the region. '''DOI (product):''' https://doi.org/10.48670/moi-00251

This metadata refers to a dataset that shows the percentage of cities' administrative area (core city based on the Urban Morphological Zones dataset) inundated by the sea level rise of 2 metres, without any coastal flooding defences present for a series of individual coastal European cities (included in Urban Audit). The dataset has been computed using the CReSIS (Centre for Remote Sensing of Ice Sheets) dataset for 2018.

The Marine Reporting Units (MRUs) are used within the reporting obligations of the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) in order to link the implementation of the different articles to specific marine areas. The MRUs can be of varying sizes, according to the appropriate scale for the different reports (e.g. region, sub-region, regional or sub-regional subdivision, Member State marine waters, WFD coastal waters, etc.), as indicated in the Good Environmental Status 2017 Decision. The present data set is the second public version released of the MRUs used during the MSFD 2018 reporting exercise on the update of Articles 8, 9 and 10. Only the MRUs of those countries that have gone through the reporting exercise by June 2020 have been included in this data set. Apart from the countries included already in version 1 of the dataset (SE, FI, EE, LV, PL, DE, DK, NL, BE, FR, ES, HR and RO), this version also includes seven more countries, namely MT, LT, IT, SI, CY, PT and IE. The data set is distributed in SHP and in INSPIRE-compliant GML format, made available also through an INSPIRE compliant ATOM service.

Level 2 sub-skin Sea Surface Temperature derived from AVHRR on Metop, global and provided in full-resolution swath (1 km at nadir), in GHRSST compliant netCDF format. The satellite input data has successively come from Metop-A, Metop-B and Metop-C level 1 data processed at EUMETSAT. SST is retrieved from AVHRR infrared channels (3.7, 10.8 and 12.0 µm) using a multispectral algorithm and a cloud mask. Atmospheric profiles of water vapor and temperature from a numerical weather prediction model, Sea Surface Temperature from an analysis, together with a radiative transfer model, are used to correct the multispectral algorithm for regional and seasonal biases due to changing atmospheric conditions. The quality of the products is monitored regularly by daily comparison of the satellite estimates against buoy measurements.The product format is compliant with the GHRSST Data Specification (GDS) version 2. Users are advised to use data only with quality levels 3,4 and 5.