Earth observation satellites routinely monitor sea-surface temperature. However, they require in situ references for calibration and validation. To support this step, drifting buoys carrying sensors with improved calibration were deployed. This paper finds that sea state and immersion depth are important to better understand the buoy measurements. A new drifting buoy was designed as a result, in the framework of the European Union Copernicus program, with an accuracy found to be within 0.01 °C.

Copernicus operational services include ocean colour applications from medium-resolution polar-orbiting satellite sensors. The goal is to satisfy EU reporting on the quality of marine, coastal and inland waters, as well as to support climate, fisheries, environmental monitoring, and sediment transport applications. Ocean colour data from polar platforms, however, suffer from fractional coverage. This effort is in developing water turbidity services from Meteosat geostationary instruments.

The Sentinel-6 mission is proposed as a multi-partner programme to continue the Jason satellite altimeter data services beyond the Jason-2 and Jason-3 missions. The Sentinel-6 mission programme consists of two identical satellites flying in sequence to prolong the climate data record of sea level accumulated by the TOPEX/Poseidon, Jason-1, Jason-2, and Jason-3 missions from 2020 to beyond 2030.