The Copernicus marine environment monitoring service provides regular and systematic reference information on the state of the physical oceans and regional seas. The observations and forecasts produced by the service support all marine applications. For instance, the provision of data on currents, winds and sea ice help to improve ship routing services, offshore operations or search and rescue operations, thus contributing to marine safety. The service also contributes to the protection and the sustainable management of living marine resources in particular for aquaculture, fishery research or regional fishery organisations. Physical and marine biogeochemical components are useful for water qualitymonitoring and pollution control. Sea level rise helps to assess coastal erosion. Sea surface temperature is one of the primary physical impacts of climate change and has direct consequences on marine ecosystems. As a result of this, the service supports a wide range of coastal and marine environment applications. Many of the data delivered by the service (e.g. temperature, salinity, sea level, currents, wind and sea ice) also play a crucial role in the domain of weather, climate and seasonal forecasting.
In November 2014, the European Commission signed a Delegation Agreement with Mercator Océan for the implementation of the service. The public version of the Technical Annex of this agreement is available in the Document Repository (under Technical Documents) available on Copernicus Marine web site. The service is delivered in an operational mode since 1st May 2015. The products delivered by the Copernicus marine environment monitoring service today are provided free of charge to registered users through an Interactive Catalogue available on the marine.copernicus.eu web portal.
