Mersea and Mercator

Mersea, a European, integrated, operational oceanography project, financed by the European Commission (5th and 6th PCRD) is preparing the ocean component of the major European programme for 'Global Monitoring for Environment and Security' (GMES). Mercator Ocean is a Mersea partner.

Mersea (Marine EnviRonment and Security for the European Area) was chosen by the European Commission for its first part, Strand 1 (2003-2004) and for its second Integrated Project (2004-2008). These projects are the European contribution to the international Godae experiment. They draw on European capabilities for developing, implementing and using ocean models as well as for assimilating satellite and in situ data into these models. The goal is to be able to distribute data products to the users involved in defining and applying European policies for protecting the marine environment and ensuring security, with a special emphasis on user feedback .

Likely applications will be for shipping, tourism, the exploitation and management of marine resources (the off-shore oil industry, fishing, aquaculture, among others) but also for solving environmental problems (for drawing-up crisis management plans and inter-governmental agreements) both locally (i.e. for preventing or dealing with pollution) and globally (with respect to climate change). There will also be research applications to increase our understanding of the ocean. These developments should demonstrate the relevance and importance of such integrated systems (using in situ data as well as satellite and modelling data) for analysis and forecasting purposes for GMES needs and requirements. The systems should also stimulate the market by paving the way for profitable services for marine applications. Mersea is the European portal for Godae.


Intercomparison of temperature fields from he Norvegian Topaz model (left) and the Mercator model (right) in Mediterranean Sea, on a 1/8° regular grid. Different fields can be compared - Salinity, meridional and zonal velocities.

Mersea IP

With Mersea IP (which began in April 2004), the project took on a new dimension. Henceforth no less than 40 partners will be working together for 5 years to set up a true integrated system for real-time ocean monitoring and forecasting. The system will be capable of providing end users with data for all types of applications (for security, environmental protection, defence and trade).

The system is based on collecting, validating and assimilating satellite and in situ data (measurements taken at sea) in global and regional ocean models.

Mercator is a crucial part of this system as the only global ocean model which the regional models use to get their boundary conditions. The Baltic sea, the Arctic ocean, the Mediterranean sea and the north-eastern Atlantic are the regional components of this system.

Mersea strand 1

The objectives of Strand 1, the first part of Mersea (January 2003 - June 2004) were to facilitate exchanges on ocean models, to measure the performances of European operational ocean models, distribute resulting products and to ensure that they match users' needs.

Strand 1 had 19 partners including the organisations responsible for the 4 major European systems for ocean analysis and forecasting:

UK Met Office (Foam, UK),
INGV (MFS,Italie)
NERSC (Topaz, Norvège)
Mercator Océan (Mercator, France).

Mersea Strand 1 set up a system for objective intercomparison of output from the 4 existing operational models. This system, which is now operational, was based on harmonising the data exchange procedures (Opendap server, access via Live Access server, standardisation of output from the four models using the NetCDF format, with a COARD/CF convention) and on defining standard diagnostics (using the concept of metrics).

The Mercator team also worked on the relationship between offer (of major systems) and demand (for applications) by looking at the case of drifting oil slicks following the shipwreck of the Prestige. Cross-checking was performed using results from two different systems (Mercator and Foam) used in two different applications which modelled the drift of the oil slicks (that of Météo-France and that of Met.No. Norway).

For more information :

Mersea IP web site
Mersea IP (Mercator chronicle)