Editorial – Apr 2013 – Special Issue jointly coordinated by Mercator Ocean and Coriolis focusing on Ocean Observations

MyOcean is the implementation project of the GMES Marine Core Service to develop the first concerted and integrated pan-European capacity for Ocean Monitoring and Forecasting. Within this project, the in-situ Thematic Assembly Centre (in-situ TAC, INS-TAC) of MyOcean is a distributed service integrating data from different sources for operational oceanography needs. The MyOcean in-situ TAC is collecting and carrying out quality control in a homogeneous manner on data from outside MyOcean data providers, especially EuroGOOS partners in Europe, to fit the needs of internal and external users. It provides access to integrated datasets of core parameters to characterise ocean state and ocean variability, by this contributing to initialization, forcing, assimilation and validation of ocean numerical models. Since the primary objective of MyOcean is to forecast ocean state, the initial focus is on observations from automatic observatories at sea (e.g. floats, buoys, gliders, ferrybox, drifters, SOOP) which are transmitting to the shore in real-time. The second objective is to set up a system for reprocessing (observations) and reanalysis (models) purposes that integrate data over the past 20 years. The global and regional portals set up by the INS-TAC have been extended by the EuroGOOS ROOSes (Arctic ROOS, BOOS, NOOS, IBI-ROOS, MOON and Black Sea GOOS) to integrate additional parameters important for downstream and national applications. The MyOcean in-situ Thematic Assembly Centre (INS-TAC) MyOcean aims at providing a sustainable service for Ocean Monitoring and Forecasting validated and commissioned by users. The MyOcean information includes observations (Near Real Time and Reprocessings) analysis, reanalysis and forecasts describing the physical state of the ocean, its variability and the ecosystem response through primary biogeochemical parameters. It also contributes to research on climate by providing long time-series of re-analysed parameters. It started in 2009 for 3 years and will continue for 2.5 additional years through the MyOcean II project that started in April 2012. The in-situ Thematic Assembly Centre of MyOcean is a distributed service integrating data from different sources for operational oceanography needs. The MyOcean in-situ TAC is collecting and carrying out quality control in a homogeneous manner on data from outside MyOcean data providers (national and international networks), in order to fit the needs of internal and external users. It provides access to integrated datasets of core parameters to characterise ocean state and ocean variability, by this contributing to initialization, forcing, assimilation and validation of ocean numerical models which are used for forecasting, analyses and re-analysis of ocean conditions. Since the primary objective of MyOcean and MyOcean2 is to forecast ocean state, the initial focus was on observations from automatic observatories at sea (e.g. floats, buoys, gliders, ferrybox, drifters, SOOP) which are transmitted in real-time to the shore at global (V