OSD Ocean Science Discussions OSD Ocean Sci. Discuss. 1812-0822 Göttingen, Germany 10.5194/osd-7-121-2010 Operational oceanography in support to indicator reporting Johannessen J. A. 1 2 Coppini G. 3 4 Soulat F. 5 Larnicol G. 5 Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Center, Bergen, Norway Geophysical Institute, University of Bergen, Norway Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia, Bologna, Italy Università di Bologna (UNIBO), Ravenna, Italy Collecte Localisation Satellites (CLS), Ramonville Saint-Agne, France 18 01 2010 7 1 121 141 Copyright: © 2010 J. A. Johannessen et al. 2010 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ This article is available from https://os.copernicus.org/preprints/7/121/2010/osd-7-121-2010.html The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://os.copernicus.org/preprints/7/121/2010/osd-7-121-2010.pdf

Operational Oceanography (OO) has now emerged to a stage that allows the design, development and execution of marine core services tailored to user requirements. As such it is also feasible to provide routine production of environmental and climate indicators. Indicators are synthetic indices of environmental changes at various temporal and spatial scales. In this paper we outline the possible contribution and strengthening of existing indicator reporting based on OO products followed by a discussion of the relevance of such improved reporting for marine environmental policy implementation and regulation. In particular, it capitalizes on the main achievements of the Marine Environment and Security of the European Area (MERSEA) project, the outcome of a European Marine Monitoring and Assessment (EMMA) workshop on the connection between operational oceanography and the European Marine Strategy (EMS) Directive and the regular European Environmental Agency (EEA) assessment reports.

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