'''This product has been archived''' For operationnal and online products, please visit https://marine.copernicus.eu '''DEFINITION''' We have derived an annual eutrophication and eutrophication indicator map for the North Atlantic Ocean using satellite-derived chlorophyll concentration. Using the satellite-derived chlorophyll products distributed in the regional North Atlantic CMEMS REP Ocean Colour dataset (OC- CCI), we derived P90 and P10 daily climatologies. The time period selected for the climatology was 1998-2017. For a given pixel, P90 and P10 were defined as dynamic thresholds such as 90% of the 1998-2017 chlorophyll values for that pixel were below the P90 value, and 10% of the chlorophyll values were below the P10 value. To minimise the effect of gaps in the data in the computation of these P90 and P10 climatological values, we imposed a threshold of 25% valid data for the daily climatology. For the 20-year 1998-2017 climatology this means that, for a given pixel and day of the year, at least 5 years must contain valid data for the resulting climatological value to be considered significant. Pixels where the minimum data requirements were met were not considered in further calculations. We compared every valid daily observation over 2020 with the corresponding daily climatology on a pixel-by-pixel basis, to determine if values were above the P90 threshold, below the P10 threshold or within the [P10, P90] range. Values above the P90 threshold or below the P10 were flagged as anomalous. The number of anomalous and total valid observations were stored during this process. We then calculated the percentage of valid anomalous observations (above/below the P90/P10 thresholds) for each pixel, to create percentile anomaly maps in terms of % days per year. Finally, we derived an annual indicator map for eutrophication levels: if 25% of the valid observations for a given pixel and year were above the P90 threshold, the pixel was flagged as eutrophic. Similarly, if 25% of the observations for a given pixel were below the P10 threshold, the pixel was flagged as oligotrophic. '''CONTEXT''' Eutrophication is the process by which an excess of nutrients – mainly phosphorus and nitrogen – in a water body leads to increased growth of plant material in an aquatic body. Anthropogenic activities, such as farming, agriculture, aquaculture and industry, are the main source of nutrient input in problem areas (Jickells, 1998; Schindler, 2006; Galloway et al., 2008). Eutrophication is an issue particularly in coastal regions and areas with restricted water flow, such as lakes and rivers (Howarth and Marino, 2006; Smith, 2003). The impact of eutrophication on aquatic ecosystems is well known: nutrient availability boosts plant growth – particularly algal blooms – resulting in a decrease in water quality (Anderson et al., 2002; Howarth et al.; 2000). This can, in turn, cause death by hypoxia of aquatic organisms (Breitburg et al., 2018), ultimately driving changes in community composition (Van Meerssche et al., 2019). Eutrophication has also been linked to changes in the pH (Cai et al., 2011, Wallace et al. 2014) and depletion of inorganic carbon in the aquatic environment (Balmer and Downing, 2011). Oligotrophication is the opposite of eutrophication, where reduction in some limiting resource leads to a decrease in photosynthesis by aquatic plants, reducing the capacity of the ecosystem to sustain the higher organisms in it. Eutrophication is one of the more long-lasting water quality problems in Europe (OSPAR ICG-EUT, 2017), and is on the forefront of most European Directives on water-protection. Efforts to reduce anthropogenically-induced pollution resulted in the implementation of the Water Framework Directive (WFD) in 2000. '''CMEMS KEY FINDINGS''' Some coastal and shelf waters, especially between 30 and 400N showed active oligotrophication flags for 2020, with some scattered offshore locations within the same latitudinal belt also showing oligotrophication. Eutrophication index is positive only for a small number of coastal locations just north of 40oN, and south of 30oN. In general, the indicator map showed very few areas with active eutrophication flags for 2019 and for 2020. The Third Integrated Report on the Eutrophication Status of the OSPAR Maritime Area (OSPAR ICG-EUT, 2017) reported an improvement from 2008 to 2017 in eutrophication status across offshore and outer coastal waters of the Greater North Sea, with a decrease in the size of coastal problem areas in Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Norway and the United Kingdom. Note: The key findings will be updated annually in November, in line with OMI evolutions. '''DOI (product):''' https://doi.org/10.48670/moi-00195

'''This product has been archived''' For operationnal and online products, please visit https://marine.copernicus.eu '''Short description:''' Mediterranean Sea - near real-time (NRT) in situ quality controlled observations, hourly updated and distributed by INSTAC within 24-48 hours from acquisition in average '''DOI (product) :''' https://doi.org/10.48670/moi-00044

'''DEFINITION''' The OMI_EXTREME_WAVE_NORTHWESTSHELF_swh_mean_and_anomaly_obs indicator is based on the computation of the 99th and the 1st percentiles from in situ data (observations). It is computed for the variable significant wave height (swh) measured by in situ buoys. The use of percentiles instead of annual maximum and minimum values, makes this extremes study less affected by individual data measurement errors. The percentiles are temporally averaged, and the spatial evolution is displayed, jointly with the anomaly in the target year. This study of extreme variability was first applied to sea level variable (Pérez Gómez et al 2016) and then extended to other essential variables, sea surface temperature and significant wave height (Pérez Gómez et al 2018). '''CONTEXT''' Projections on Climate Change foresee a future with a greater frequency of extreme sea states (Stott, 2016; Mitchell, 2006). The damages caused by severe wave storms can be considerable not only in infrastructure and buildings but also in the natural habitat, crops and ecosystems affected by erosion and flooding aggravated by the extreme wave heights. In addition, wave storms strongly hamper the maritime activities, especially in harbours. These extreme phenomena drive complex hydrodynamic processes, whose understanding is paramount for proper infrastructure management, design and maintenance (Goda, 2010). In recent years, there have been several studies searching possible trends in wave conditions focusing on both mean and extreme values of significant wave height using a multi-source approach with model reanalysis information with high variability in the time coverage, satellite altimeter records covering the last 30 years and in situ buoy measured data since the 1980s decade but with sparse information and gaps in the time series (e.g. Dodet et al., 2020; Timmermans et al., 2020; Young & Ribal, 2019). These studies highlight a remarkable interannual, seasonal and spatial variability of wave conditions and suggest that the possible observed trends are not clearly associated with anthropogenic forcing (Hochet et al. 2021, 2023). In the North Atlantic, the mean wave height shows some weak trends not very statistically significant. Young & Ribal (2019) found a mostly positive weak trend in the European Coasts while Timmermans et al. (2020) showed a weak negative trend in high latitudes, including the North Sea and even more intense in the Norwegian Sea. For extreme values, some authors have found a clearer positive trend in high percentiles (90th-99th) (Young et al., 2011; Young & Ribal, 2019). '''COPERNICUS MARINE SERVICE KEY FINDINGS''' The mean 99th percentiles showed in the area present a wide range from 2.5 meters in the English Channel with 0.3m of standard deviation (std), 3-5m in the southern and central North Sea with 0.3-0.6m of std, 4 meters in the Skagerrak Strait with 0.6m of std, 6-7m in the northern North Sea with 0.4-0.5m of std to 8 meters in the NorthWest of the British Isles with 0.8-1.0m of std. Results for this year show either low positive or negative anomalies between -0.3m and +0.4m, inside the margin of the standard deviation, in the English Channel, the Skagerrak Strait and the southern and central North Sea except in the station 6200046 with a positive anomaly of 0.8m and a slight negative anomaly (-0.1/-0.5m) inside the margin of the std in the NorthWest of the British Isles and the northern North Sea. '''DOI (product):''' https://doi.org/10.48670/moi-00270

'''This product has been archived'''                For operationnal and online products, please visit https://marine.copernicus.eu '''Short description:''' Altimeter satellite along-track sea surface heights anomalies (SLA) computed with respect to a twenty-year [1993, 2012] mean with a 1Hz (~7km) sampling. It serves in near-real time applications. This product is processed by the DUACS multimission altimeter data processing system. It processes data from all altimeter missions available (e.g. Sentinel-6A, Jason-3, Sentinel-3A, Sentinel-3B, Saral/AltiKa, Cryosat-2, HY-2B). The system exploits the most recent datasets available based on the enhanced OGDR/NRT+IGDR/STC production. All the missions are homogenized with respect to a reference mission. Part of the processing is fitted to the Global Ocean. (see QUID document or http://duacs.cls.fr [http://duacs.cls.fr] pages for processing details). The product gives additional variables (e.g. Mean Dynamic Topography, Dynamic Atmospheric Correction, Ocean Tides, Long Wavelength Errors) that can be used to change the physical content for specific needs (see PUM document for details) “’Associated products”’ A time invariant product http://marine.copernicus.eu/services-portfolio/access-to-products/?option=com_csw&view=details&product_id=SEALEVEL_GLO_NOISE_L4_NRT_OBSERVATIONS_008_032 [http://marine.copernicus.eu/services-portfolio/access-to-products/?option=com_csw&view=details&product_id=SEALEVEL_GLO_PHY_NOISE_L4_STATIC_008_033] describing the noise level of along-track measurements is available. It is associated to the sla_filtered variable. It is a gridded product. One file is provided for the global ocean and those values must be applied for Arctic and Europe products. For Mediterranean and Black seas, one value is given in the QUID document. '''DOI (product) :''' https://doi.org/10.48670/moi-00147

'''This product has been archived''' For operationnal and online products, please visit https://marine.copernicus.eu '''Short description:''' The Global Ocean Satellite monitoring and marine ecosystem study group (GOS) of the Italian National Research Council (CNR), in Rome, distributes Level-4 product including the daily interpolated chlorophyll field with no data voids starting from the multi-sensor (MODIS-Aqua, NOAA-20-VIIRS, NPP-VIIRS, Sentinel3A-OLCI at 300m of resolution) (at 1 km resolution) and the monthly averaged chlorophyll concentration for the multi-sensor (at 1 km resolution) and Sentinel-OLCI Level-3 (at 300m resolution). Chlorophyll field are obtained by means of the Mediterranean regional algorithms: an updated version of the MedOC4 (Case 1 waters, Volpe et al., 2019, with new coefficients) and AD4 (Case 2 waters, Berthon and Zibordi, 2004). Discrimination between the two water types is performed by comparing the satellite spectrum with the average water type spectral signature from in situ measurements for both water types. Reference insitu dataset is MedBiOp (Volpe et al., 2019) where pure Case II spectra are selected using a k-mean cluster analysis (Melin et al., 2015). Merging of Case I and Case II information is performed estimating the Mahalanobis distance between the observed and reference spectra and using it as weight for the final merged value. The interpolated gap-free Level-4 Chl concentration is estimated by means of a modified version of the DINEOF algorithm by GOS (Volpe et al., 2018). DINEOF is an iterative procedure in which EOF are used to reconstruct the entire field domain. As first guess, it uses the SeaWiFS-derived daily climatological values at missing pixels and satellite observations at valid pixels. The other Level-4 dataset is the time averages of the L3 fields and includes the standard deviation and the number of observations in the monthly period of integration. '''Processing information:''' Multi-sensor products are constituted by MODIS-AQUA, NOAA20-VIIRS, NPP-VIIRS and Sentinel3A-OLCI. For consistency with NASA L2 dataset, BRDF correction was applied to Sentinel3A-OLCI prior to band shifting and multi sensor merging. Hence, the single sensor OLCI data set is also distributed after BRDF correction. Single sensor NASA Level-2 data are destriped and then all Level-2 data are remapped at 1 km spatial resolution (300m for Sentinel3A-OLCI) using cylindrical equirectangular projection. Afterwards, single sensor Rrs fields are band-shifted, over the SeaWiFS native bands (using the QAAv6 model, Lee et al., 2002) and merged with a technique aimed at smoothing the differences among different sensors. This technique is developed by The Global Ocean Satellite monitoring and marine ecosystem study group (GOS) of the Italian National Research Council (CNR, Rome). Then geophysical fields (i.e. chlorophyll, kd490, bbp, aph and adg) are estimated via state-of-the-art algorithms for better product quality. Level-4 includes both monthly time averages and the daily-interpolated fields. Time averages are computed on the delayed-time data. The interpolated product starts from the L3 products at 1 km resolution. At the first iteration, DINEOF procedure uses, as first guess for each of the missing pixels the relative daily climatological pixel. A procedure to smooth out spurious spatial gradients is applied to the daily merged image (observation and climatology). From the second iteration, the procedure uses, as input for the next one, the field obtained by the EOF calculation, using only a number of modes: that is, at the second round, only the first two modes, at the third only the first three, and so on. At each iteration, the same smoothing procedure is applied between EOF output and initial observations. The procedure stops when the variance explained by the current EOF mode exceeds that of noise. '''Description of observation methods/instruments:''' Ocean colour technique exploits the emerging electromagnetic radiation from the sea surface in different wavelengths. The spectral variability of this signal defines the so-called ocean colour which is affected by the pre+D2sence of phytoplankton. '''Quality / Accuracy / Calibration information:''' A detailed description of the calibration and validation activities performed over this product can be found on the CMEMS web portal. '''Suitability, Expected type of users / uses:''' This product is meant for use for educational purposes and for the managing of the marine safety, marine resources, marine and coastal environment and for climate and seasonal studies. '''Dataset names:''' *dataset-oc-med-chl-multi-l4-chl_1km_monthly-rt-v02 *dataset-oc-med-chl-multi-l4-interp_1km_daily-rt-v02 *dataset-oc-med-chl-olci-l4-chl_300m_monthly-rt-v02 '''Files format:''' *CF-1.4 *INSPIRE compliant '''DOI (product) :''' https://doi.org/10.48670/moi-00113

'''DEFINITION''' The OMI_EXTREME_WAVE_IBI_swh_mean_and_anomaly_obs indicator is based on the computation of the 99th and the 1st percentiles from in situ data (observations). It is computed for the variable significant wave height (swh) measured by in situ buoys. The use of percentiles instead of annual maximum and minimum values, makes this extremes study less affected by individual data measurement errors. The percentiles are temporally averaged, and the spatial evolution is displayed, jointly with the anomaly in the target year. This study of extreme variability was first applied to sea level variable (Pérez Gómez et al 2016) and then extended to other essential variables, sea surface temperature and significant wave height (Pérez Gómez et al 2018). '''CONTEXT''' Projections on Climate Change foresee a future with a greater frequency of extreme sea states (Stott, 2016; Mitchell, 2006). The damages caused by severe wave storms can be considerable not only in infrastructure and buildings but also in the natural habitat, crops and ecosystems affected by erosion and flooding aggravated by the extreme wave heights. In addition, wave storms strongly hamper the maritime activities, especially in harbours. These extreme phenomena drive complex hydrodynamic processes, whose understanding is paramount for proper infrastructure management, design and maintenance (Goda, 2010). In recent years, there have been several studies searching possible trends in wave conditions focusing on both mean and extreme values of significant wave height using a multi-source approach with model reanalysis information with high variability in the time coverage, satellite altimeter records covering the last 30 years and in situ buoy measured data since the 1980s decade but with sparse information and gaps in the time series (e.g. Dodet et al., 2020; Timmermans et al., 2020; Young & Ribal, 2019). These studies highlight a remarkable interannual, seasonal and spatial variability of wave conditions and suggest that the possible observed trends are not clearly associated with anthropogenic forcing (Hochet et al. 2021, 2023). In the North Atlantic, the mean wave height shows some weak trends not very statistically significant. Young & Ribal (2019) found a mostly positive weak trend in the European Coasts while Timmermans et al. (2020) showed a weak negative trend in high latitudes, including the North Sea and even more intense in the Norwegian Sea. For extreme values, some authors have found a clearer positive trend in high percentiles (90th-99th) (Young, 2011; Young & Ribal, 2019). '''COPERNICUS MARINE SERVICE KEY FINDINGS''' The mean 99th percentiles showed in the area present a wide range from 2-3.5m in the Canary Island with 0.1-0.3 m of standard deviation (std), 3.5m in the Gulf of Cadiz with 0.5m of std, 3-6m in the English Channel and the Irish Sea with 0.5-0.6m of std, 4-7m in the Bay of Biscay with 0.4-0.9m of std to 8-10m in the West of the British Isles with 0.7-1.4m of std. Results for this year show slight negative anomalies in the Canary Island (-0.4/0.0m) and in the Gulf of Cadiz (-0.8m) barely out of the standard deviation range in both areas, slight positive or negative anomalies in the West of the British Isles (-0.6/+0.4m) and in the English Channel and the Irish Sea (-0.6/+0.3m) but inside the range of the standard deviation and a general positive anomaly in the Bay of Biscay reaching +1.0m but close to the limit of the standard deviation. '''DOI (product):''' https://doi.org/10.48670/moi-00250

'''DEFINITION''' The global annual chlorophyll anomaly is computed by subtracting a reference climatology (1997-2014) from the annual chlorophyll mean, on a pixel-by-pixel basis and in log10 space. Both the annual mean and the climatology are computed employing ESA Ocean Colour Climate Change Initiative (ESA OC-CCI, Sathyendranath et al., 2018a) global products (i.e. using the standard OC-CCI chlorophyll algorithms, OCI) as distributed by CMEMS. '''CONTEXT''' Phytoplankton – and chlorophyll concentration as a proxy for phytoplankton – respond rapidly to changes in their physical environment. Some of those changes are seasonal and are determined by light and nutrient availability (Racault et al., 2012). By comparing annual mean values to a climatology, we effectively remove the seasonal signal, while retaining information on potential events during the year. Chlorophyll anomalies can be correlated to climate indexes in particular regions, such as the ENSO index in the equatorial Pacific (Behrenfeld et al. 2006; Racault et al., 2012) and the IOD index in the Indian Ocean (Brewin et al., 2012). It is important to study chlorophyll anomalies in consonance with sea surface temperature and sea level anomalies, as increases in chlorophyll are generally consistent with decreases in SST and sea level anomalies, suggesting an increase in mixing and vertical nutrient transport (von Schuckmann et al., 2016). '''CMEMS KEY FINDINGS''' The average global chlorophyll anomaly 2019 is -0.02 log10(mg m-3), with a maximum value of 1.7 log10(mg m-3) and a minimum value of -3.2 log10(mg m-3). That is to say that, in average, the annual 2019 mean value is slightly lower (96%) than the 1997-2014 climatological value. The positive signals reported in 2016 and 2017 (Sathyendranath et al., 2018b) in the southern Pacific Ocean could still be observed in the 2019 map, while the significant negative anomalies in the tropical waters of the northern Pacific Ocean were also detected to a lesser extent. Areas showing a change of anomaly sign from 2019 include the southern coast of Japan (no anomaly to positive) and the tropical Atlantic (anomalies close to zero for 2019). A marked increase in chlorophyll concentration was observed during 2019 in the Great Australian Bight, while negative anomalies became stronger in the Guatemala Basin and the region south of the Gulf of Guinea and, with values of chlorophyll reaching as low as 30% of the climatological value (anomaly < -0.5 log10(mg m-3)). The persistent positive anomalies in the higher latitudes of the North Atlantic (> 40°) match the cooling observed in the 2018 and previous years SST anomaly maps.

'''Short description:''' The IBI-MFC provides a high-resolution wave analysis and forecast product (run twice a day by Nologin with the support of CESGA in terms of supercomputing resources), covering the European waters, and more specifically the Iberia–Biscay–Ireland (IBI) area. The last 2 years before now (historic best estimates), as well as hourly instantaneous forecasts with a horizon of up to 10 days (updated on a daily basis) are available on the catalogue. The IBI wave model system is based on the MFWAM model and runs on a grid of 1/36º of horizontal resolution forced with the ECMWF hourly wind data. The system assimilates significant wave height (SWH) altimeter data and CFOSAT wave spectral data (supplied by Météo-France), and it is forced by currents provided by the IBI ocean circulation system. The product offers hourly instantaneous fields of different wave parameters, including Wave Height, Period and Direction for total spectrum; fields of Wind Wave (or wind sea), Primary Swell Wave and Secondary Swell for partitioned wave spectra; and the highest wave variables, such as maximum crest height and maximum crest-to-trough height. Additionally, the IBI wave system is set up to provide internally some key parameters adequate to be used as forcing in the IBI NEMO ocean model forecast run. '''DOI (Product)''': https://doi.org/10.48670/moi-00025

'''This product has been archived'''                For operationnal and online products, please visit https://marine.copernicus.eu '''DEFINITION''' The ocean monitoring indicator on regional mean sea level is derived from the DUACS delayed-time (DT-2021 version) altimeter gridded maps of sea level anomalies based on a stable number of altimeters (two) in the satellite constellation. These products are distributed by the Copernicus Climate Change Service and the Copernicus Marine Service (SEALEVEL_GLO_PHY_CLIMATE_L4_MY_008_057). The mean sea level evolution estimated in the Irish-Biscay-Iberian (IBI) region is derived from the average of the gridded sea level maps weighted by the cosine of the latitude. The annual and semi-annual periodic signals are removed (least square fit of sinusoidal function) and the time series is low-pass filtered (175 days cut-off). The curve is corrected for the regional mean effect of the Glacial Isostatic Adjustment (GIA) using the ICE5G-VM2 GIA model (Peltier, 2004). During 1993-1998, the Global men sea level (hereafter GMSL) has been known to be affected by a TOPEX-A instrumental drift (WCRP Global Sea Level Budget Group, 2018; Legeais et al., 2020). This drift led to overestimate the trend of the GMSL during the first 6 years of the altimetry record (about 0.04 mm/y at global scale over the whole altimeter period). A correction of the drift is proposed for the Global mean sea level (Legeais et al., 2020). Whereas this TOPEX-A instrumental drift should also affect the regional mean sea level (hereafter RMSL) trend estimation, currently this empirical correction is currently not applied to the altimeter sea level dataset and resulting estimated for RMSL. Indeed, the pertinence of the global correction applied at regional scale has not been demonstrated yet and there is no clear consensus achieved on the way to proceed at regional scale. Additionally, the estimation of such a correction at regional scale is not obvious, especially in areas where few accurate independent measurements (e.g. in situ)- necessary for this estimation - are available. The trend uncertainty is provided in a 90% confidence interval (Prandi et al., 2021). This estimate only considers errors related to the altimeter observation system (i.e., orbit determination errors, geophysical correction errors and inter-mission bias correction errors). The presence of the interannual signal can strongly influence the trend estimation considering to the altimeter period considered (Wang et al., 2021; Cazenave et al., 2014). The uncertainty linked to this effect is not taken into account. '''CONTEXT''' The indicator on area averaged sea level is a crucial index of climate change, and individual components contribute to sea level rise, including expansion due to ocean warming and melting of glaciers and ice sheets (WCRP Global Sea Level Budget Group, 2018). According to the recent IPCC 6th assessment report, global mean sea level (GMSL) increased by 0.20 (0.15 to 0.25) m over the period 1901 to 2018 with a rate 25 of rise that has accelerated since the 1960s to 3.7 (3.2 to 4.2) mm yr-1 for the period 2006–2018. Human activity was very likely the main driver of observed GMSL rise since 1970 (IPCC WGII, 2021). The weight of the different contributions evolves with time and in the recent decades the mass change has increased, contributing to the on-going acceleration of the GMSL trend (IPCC, 2022a; Legeais et al., 2020; Horwath et al., 2022). At regional scale, sea level does not change homogenously, and RMSL rise can also be influenced by various other processes, with different spatial and temporal scales, such as local ocean dynamic, atmospheric forcing, Earth gravity and vertical land motion changes (IPCC WGI, 2021). Rising sea level can strongly affect population and infrastructures in coastal areas, increase their vulnerability and risks for food security, particularly in low lying areas and island states. Adverse impacts from floods, storms and tropical cyclones with related losses and damages have increased due to sea level rise, and increase their vulnerability and increase risks for food security, particularly in low lying areas and island states (IPCC, 2022b). Adaptation and mitigation measures such as the restoration of mangroves and coastal wetlands, reduce the risks from sea level rise (IPCC, 2022c). In IBI region, the RMSL trend is modulated by decadal variations. As observed over the global ocean, the main actors of the long-term RMSL trend are associated with anthropogenic global/regional warming. Decadal variability is mainly linked to the strengthening or weakening of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) (e.g. Chafik et al., 2019). The latest is driven by the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) (e.g. Delworth and Zeng, 2016). Along the European coast, the NAO also influences the along-slope winds dynamic which in return significantly contributes to the local sea level variability observed (Chafik et al., 2019). '''CMEMS KEY FINDINGS''' Over the [1993/01/01, 2021/08/02] period, the basin-wide RMSL in the IBI area rises at a rate of 3.8  0.82 mm/year. '''DOI (product):''' https://doi.org/10.48670/moi-00252

'''DEFINITION''' Significant wave height (SWH), expressed in metres, is the average height of the highest third of waves. This OMI provides global maps of the seasonal mean and trend of significant wave height (SWH), as well as time series in three oceanic regions of the same variables and their trends from 2002 to 2020, calculated from the reprocessed global L4 SWH product (WAVE_GLO_PHY_SWH_L4_MY_014_007). The extreme SWH is defined as the 95th percentile of the daily maximum SWH for the selected period and region. The 95th percentile is the value below which 95% of the data points fall, indicating higher than normal wave heights. The mean and 95th percentile of SWH (in m) are calculated for two seasons of the year to take into account the seasonal variability of waves (January, February and March, and July, August and September). Trends have been obtained using linear regression and are expressed in cm/yr. For the time series, the uncertainty around the trend was obtained from the linear regression, while the uncertainty around the mean and 95th percentile was bootstrapped. For the maps, if the p-value obtained from the linear regression is less than 0.05, the trend is considered significant. '''CONTEXT''' Grasping the nature of global ocean surface waves, their variability, and their long-term interannual shifts is essential for climate research and diverse oceanic and coastal applications. The sixth IPCC Assessment Report underscores the significant role waves play in extreme sea level events (Mentaschi et al., 2017), flooding (Storlazzi et al., 2018), and coastal erosion (Barnard et al., 2017). Additionally, waves impact ocean circulation and mediate interactions between air and sea (Donelan et al., 1997) as well as sea-ice interactions (Thomas et al., 2019). Studying these long-term and interannual changes demands precise time series data spanning several decades. Until now, such records have been available only from global model reanalyses or localised in situ observations. While buoy data are valuable, they offer limited local insights and are especially scarce in the southern hemisphere. In contrast, altimeters deliver global, high-quality measurements of significant wave heights (SWH) (Gommenginger et al., 2002). The growing satellite record of SWH now facilitates more extensive global and long-term analyses. By using SWH data from a multi-mission altimetric product from 2002 to 2020, we can calculate global mean SWH and extreme SWH and evaluate their trends, regionally and globally. '''KEY FINDINGS''' From 2002 to 2020, positive trends in both Significant Wave Height (SWH) and extreme SWH are mostly found in the southern hemisphere (a, b). The 95th percentile of wave heights (q95), increases faster than the average values, indicating that extreme waves are growing more rapidly than average wave height (a, b). Extreme SWH’s global maps highlight heavily storms affected regions, including the western North Pacific, the North Atlantic and the eastern tropical Pacific (a). In the North Atlantic, SWH has increased in summertime (July August September) but decreased in winter. Specifically, the 95th percentile SWH trend is decreasing by 2.1 ± 3.3 cm/year, while the mean SWH shows a decrease of 2.2 ± 1.76 cm/year. In the south of Australia, during boreal winter, the 95th percentile SWH is increasing at 2.6 ± 1.5 cm/year (c), with the mean SWH increasing by 0.5 ± 0.66 cm/year (d). Finally, in the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, also in boreal winter, the 95th percentile SWH trend is 3.2 ± 2.14 cm/year (c) and the mean SWH trend is 1.7 ± 0.84 cm/year (d). These patterns highlight the complex and region-specific nature of wave height trends. Further discussion is available in A. Laloue et al. (2024). '''DOI (product):''' https://doi.org/10.48670/mds-00352