In Situ Thematic Centre for Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service

The in-situ TAC integrates and quality control in a homogeneous manner in situ data from outside Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service (CMEMS) data providers to fit the needs of internal and external users. It provides access to integrated datasets of core parameters for initialization, forcing, assimilation and validation of ocean numerical models which are used for forecasting, analysis and re-analysis of ocean physical and biogeochemical conditions. The in-situ TAC comprises a global in-situ centre and 6 regional in-situ centres (one for each EuroGOOS ROOSs). The focus of the CMEMS in-situ TAC is on parameters that are presently necessary for Copernicus Monitoring and Forecasting Centres namely temperature, salinity, sea level, current, waves, chlorophyll / fluorescence, oxygen and nutrients. The initial focus has been on observations from autonomous observatories at sea (e.g. floats, buoys, gliders, ferrybox, drifters, and ships of opportunity). The second objective was to integrate products over the past 25 to 50 years for re-analysis purposes... Gathering data from outsider organisations requires strong mutual agreements. Integrating data into ONE data base requires strong format standard definition and quality control procedures. The complexity of handling in situ observation depends not only on the wide range of sensors that have been used to acquire them but, in addition to that, the different operational behaviour of the platforms (i.e vessels allow on board human supervision, while the supervision of others should be put off until recovering or message/ping reception)°