Atlantic from Space workshop 2019

Coastal processes (tidal currents, storm surges, waves) are highly dependent on bathymetry and directly impact offshore and coastal activities and studies. Many studies and applications lie on a growing modelling effort of the ocean and the limited accuracy of bathymetry, especially on the continental shelves, contributes to degrade numerical model performance despite significant use of in-situ and satellite measurements assimilation. In particular, the tidal models are very sensitive to the bathymetry accuracy on the shelves, where the ocean tides show the largest amplitudes and are strongly non-linear. The increase in the grid resolution, together combined with local model tuning, is one of the means to improve the tidal model performance in the coastal regions and large improvements have been achieved thanks to this approach. However, increasing the resolution of the model grid implies consistent bathymetry quality and accuracy, which is today the main limiting factor to high resolution tidal modelling.
Better knowledge of the tides has a direct impact on the quality of the satellite altimetry sea surface heights and of all derived products such as the altimetry-derived geostrophic currents, the mean sea surface, the mean dynamic topography and the geoid. It is also of particular interest for boundary conditions of high resolution ocean circulation modelling on the shelves. Finally, accurate tidal models are highly strategic information for ever-growing maritime and industrial activities in the coastal regions.
Various sources of bathymetry data exist but many regions remain not well known because of too sparse measurements, data access limitation or large temporal variability of the seabed dynamics. In this context, CNES funded a project that aimed to improve the bathymetry and the tides in the North-East Atlantic continental shelves. The work was divided in several steps: 1) an inventory of existing datasets and methods to derive the bathymetry on the shelves; 2) the integration of the collected datasets into a reference global bathymetry dataset; 3) the evaluation of this new bathymetry dataset through hydrodynamic modelling and the production of a high resolution regional tidal model.
This paper will present the main results obtained within this project.

The tropical Atlantic Ocean off the Amazon River mouth comprises a complex and important earth system where multi-scale ocean processes combine and are ultimately determinant to the earth climate. For instance, rich nutrients of the Amazon River are discharged and entrained into the North Brazil Current (NBC) which flows along the shelf, approximately north-westwards. The NBC is constrained, in the upper 100 m of the water column, by the opposing Atlantic North Equatorial Counter-Current (NECC) flowing eastwards near the surface at about 6°N. Eddies are formed along the shelf break and at the confluence of the NBC and NECC, contributing to shelf-ocean exchange processes. The NECC transports the productive water across the Atlantic towards the western African coast, ultimately feeding the Guinea Current. Satellite measurements of the "plume" area in the Atlantic have been used to estimate the size of the associated atmospheric carbon sink (Cooley et al., 2007). This large scale picture is accompanied with mixing processes at fine scales, for which internal waves (of tidal and much shorter periods) are believed to play a significant role. These are large amplitude internal solitary waves (ISWs) with vertical displacements of the order of 100 m that become highly nonlinear, with large vertical velocities and heat fluxes that exceed 1000 times the background unperturbed upper-ocean (Shroyer, 2009).
In the framework of the AMAZOMIX project lead by the French (Laboratoire d’Etudes en Géophysique et Océanographie Spatiales, LEGOS), an in situ sampling program is being planned off the Amazon River mouth and into the deep western tropical Atlantic. The main goal is to survey mixing and turbulent processes, and contributions thereof for biological and biogeochemical processes as well as for the local ecosystems. In particular, internal waves will be measured to assess how dissipation at generation sites compare with that along their propagation paths. Satellite observations and modeling will complement the in-situ observations.
We reveal that the Amazon shelf break is a powerful hotspot for intense ISWs. Satellite Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data show their two-dimensional horizontal structure and yielded important results concerning their generation and propagation characteristics. Two distinct generation sites were identified off the shelf slopes, each associated with a different pathway of ISWs, but both consistent with an energetics analysis exhibiting high Internal Tide (IT) conversion rates (provided from the Hybrid Coordinate Ocean Model – HYCOM). These largescale waves are characterized by their elevated propagation speeds and remote appearance several hundred kms away from the nearest forcing bathymetry. These large distances are explained in light of a late disintegration of the IT, based on standard parameters governing the balance between nonlinear and dispersion effects, and the decrease of the waveguide (i.e. thermocline) thickness along a pronounced density front. Furthermore, we propose a method to retrieve ISW amplitudes from SAR altimeter measurements (Sentinel-3) and derive current profiles in the water column based on sea level displacements and our knowledge of density climatology. The method, as well as other important questions, will benefit from the dedicated in situ measurements from AMAZOMIX.

Recent work has demonstrated the recurrent presence of coastal eddies (diameter about 50 km) in the area covered by a land-based HF radar (HFR) in the SE Bay of Biscay. These eddies can persist during several weeks and play a significant role in the export of coastal rich waters towards the open ocean. The study of their surface properties at high temporal and spatial resolution is possible thanks to the continuous monitoring of surface currents within the HFR footprint area. Their observation using satellite measurements is also possible, although limited by the discontinuous coverage and resolution of the data. These rapidly evolving eddies can be detected by the altimetry; nevertheless, the low spatio-temporal resolution of the data does not always enable to map accurately the associated surface geostrophic currents. In the periods of low cloud coverage, visible and satellite IR data offer further possibilities, when combined with an appropriate theoretical framework as: the use of sequences of images to retrieve the velocity field that originated the motion of the observed tracers, or the use single SST maps to derive high-resolution surface currents using an approach based in the Surface Quasi-geostrophic (SQG) approximation. Lower-resolution but more repetitive maps can be constructed using microwave remote sensing data, as AMSRE SST or L-band SSS, that are not affected by the presence of clouds. Within the framework of SQG it is possible to retrieve the three-dimensional dynamics of the eddy, if environmental and dynamical conditions are the appropriate.
These eddies could be more frequent than commonly thought, and thus may play a very significant role in the transport of water masses in the Atlantic. But in the absence of an extensive network of HFRs along the basin coast, this idea is speculative. The use of remote sensing maps to extract dynamic information about these coastal processes could help filling this gap. In this work, we investigate the range of application of SQG to solve and describe coastal eddies, comparing with measurements from the SE Bay of Biscay HFR and we discuss the prospect of extending this approach to the whole Atlantic coastal area.

It is well established that global sea-level is increasing and that large-scale weather patterns are changing. However, across large parts of the world, there is a lack of observational data on which to implement evidence-based approaches to coastal adaptation. Satellite altimetry provides several decades of sea level, winds and waves data that are highly relevant to these problems.

The coastal zone presents significant challenges to altimetry that call for specialised processing. In this paper we present recommendations from recent projects that developed and applied improved altimeter products for Coastal Risk applications.

First, we review results and recommendations from the ESA-funded SCOOP project which evaluated different SAR altimeter processing schemes to achieve the best performance near the coast.

We then present recent applications of coastal altimetry in two projects funded by the UK Space Agency, where output from the NOC ALES-based altimetry processor were exploited for coastal risk assessment in UK regional seas and the South-West Indian Ocean.

Thus, Sea Level Space Watch is a demonstration service designed to support agencies in the UK responsible for flood defences and the preservation of coastal habitats threatened by sea level change. C-RISe delivers a Coastal Risk Information Service for the South West Indian Ocean, providing information on sea level, winds and wave heights derived from satellite altimetry and scaatterometry. This Overseas Development Assistance project also features capacity building and training workshops on the use of marine satellite data to quantify coastal hazards and their incorporation into local decision making. Although C-RISe is currently focussed on the SW Indian Ocean, the service concept offers interesting possibilities elsewhere, particularly to Small Island Developing States in the Atlantic zone facing similar problems.

The paper will present an overview of these services and initial recommendations and lessons-learned from Use Cases and training programmes.

Amongst the various EO techniques, satellite altimeters have the distinct capability of observing the open ocean repeatedly, continuously and globally, with centimetre-level accuracy. However, as altimeters have been designed to observe the open ocean, particular problems arise in coastal regions, due to several factors, namely the large size of the altimeter footprint and of its accompanying microwave radiometer, when they sense land, simultaneously with water, that possesses a completely different surface backscatter and emissivity. This brings additional difficulties to the retrieval of accurate sea surface parameters (sea surface height - SSH, backscatter and significant wave height) and in the modelling of the range and geophysical corrections required to account for the phenomena that affect the measured SSH. The monitoring of coastal sea level, of upmost importance for efficient management of the sensitive coastal zone, requires high level altimeter products provided at the highest possible rate, using state-of the-art retracking algorithms and tuned corrections to the altimeter range.
For the last two decades, the University of Porto (UPorto) has been involved in satellite altimetry studies focused on the development of methodologies to improve altimeter range and geophysical corrections in the coastal zone and their application mainly in the North-Atlantic Ocean. This paper aims at presenting a survey of the activities of the UPorto, Faculty of Science’s (FCUP) team in these topics of great relevance for the building of a coastal sea level dataset for the Atlantic Ocean.
Altimeter studies have been focused on the development of methods to derive accurate SSH datasets over coastal and inland water regions. Of particular relevance has been the implementation of the GPD+ (GNSS-derived Path Delay Plus) algorithm to retrieve continuous (valid over all surface types), consistent and accurate wet tropospheric corrections (WTC) for all altimeter missions that span the main satellite altimeter era, since 1991.
The GPD+ WTC have been selected for use in the generation of products from the ESA Climate Change Initiative Sea Level (SL-cci) project, being currently made publicly available by AVISO, in addition to the UPorto webpage. The correction is being computed operationally and made available in CryoSat-2 level 2 products, being also present in Envisat V3.0 products.
Additional work has been carried out in the retrieval of accurate tropospheric corrections for inland water applications and on the sea state effect on altimeter range, the sea state bias.
These activities have taken place in the scope of various national and ESA funded projects, in strict collaboration with national and international institutions, e.g., Instituto Hidrográfico, FCUL, Univ. Açores, NOC, SAtOC, CLS, etc.. National and Interreg Spanish cross-border projects in the scope of which various EO studies have been conducted in the North Atlantic include: SATFISH, POCUS, RAIA, ASH, etc.. ESA sponsored projects include OCEAN EYE, COASTALT, SL_cci, CP4O, SHAPE and SCOOP.
A summary of these activities is presented as well as the UPorto contribution, in the context of collaborative national and international efforts, to a better monitoring of the Atlantic Ocean, with focus on the coastal zone and the regional sea level.

Satellite remote sensing is an increasingly useful tool to globally monitor and analyse essential variables and climate change impacts from drought and inundation monitoring to long-term sea level and ocean circulation changes. Within the Atlantic context, we address contribution and limitation of remote sensing to the three issues: (1) relative coastal sea level and sea state, (2) regional sea level budget near Greenland and (3) ocean circulation.

First topic is the change in relative sea level (RSL) and sea state at the coast. Tide gauges are the primary source of coastal observations and satellite altimetry provides complementary measurements relative to the Earth ellipsoid connecting coastal to open sea processes. Studies along the North-Eastern Atlantic show a good agreement between altimetry and VLM-corrected tide gauges with sea level trend differences smaller than 1 mm/yr in mean and RMS differences of few centimetres. Challenging are coasts with few or without tide gauges, where altimetry is the only source for the analysis of sea level and extremes (e.g., 20/50year return period), which enhance the vulnerability. Needed are a further reduction of the coastal gap, below the 2-3 Km corresponding to the enhanced Conventional (CA) and Delay Doppler (DDA) altimetry, and improved accuracy and precision. These appear feasible by enhanced SAR processing (fully focused SAR) and by new technologies, like the "swath-altimetry" (SWOT mission) and the Synthetic Aperture Radar imaging.

Secondly, we address the interaction of Greenland North East glaciers with the surrounding ocean. Focus are the 79°N glacier and the North East Greenland Ice Stream NEGIS (GROCE/BMBF). More than 25% of global sea level rise is caused by mass loss of Greenland ice sheet, driven by the warming of the North Atlantic. The challenge is to quantify the impact of the increased freshwater flux on the regional sea level budget. We analyse the gravimetric mass change with GRACE and SWARM data, sea level changes with satellite altimetry and changes in modelled sea surface height, temperature and salinity through simulations of the AWI FESOM model driven by the corresponding freshwater flux.

Finally we address the challenges in the determination of models for the mean sea surface, the mean dynamic ocean topography and the dynamic ocean topography. These surfaces are the reference for sea level change and can be related to the steady-state ocean currents and to the changes in the current system. The established approaches typically derive gridded snapshots of the surfaces and therefore do not continuously describe changes in time. They also do not account for uncertainties in the observations. Moreover, the combination of different observations (currents, slopes, etc.) sensitive to a given functional is not straightforward. To address these challenges, we model the three surfaces by parametric finite elements. New observations, e.g. surface currents (SAR and SKIM), can be easily integrated in the model. Moreover, due to the parametric nature, extrapolation to the coastlines become possible, where a connection with tide gauges can be studied.

Increasing sea level has many implications on the shallow European shelf. Examples are an increased risk of flooding and changes to the design basis of offshore structures. For these and other reasons it becomes increasingly important to be able to plan for future sea level rises. A key factor in this is to be able to describe and understand the past sea level and trends of this. Several questions appear, among these: i) Satellite altimetry is widely used to calculate sea level trends, but can these products be used in regions close to the coast? ii) How does the trends from satellite compare with in-situ measurements?

The ESA Sea Level CCI product constitutes high quality monthly sea level variability and trend analysis for the open ocean. However, it is commonly used in the coastal zone. Here, we assess the quality in the coastal zone of the European shelf by comparing the monthly variability of the CCI with that of the statistical model and of independent tide gauges from PSMSL, taking land rise information into account. The aim is to determine the quality of the Sea level CCI and based on this; asses where it can be considered reliable. Finally, the trends of the statistical reconstruction, the independent tide gauges, and the altimetry are compared.

There exists nowadays an increasing amount of ocean data, available from different sources such as satellite altimeter observations of the ocean surface, radar or quasi true color images, or accurate numerical simulations of ocean velocity fields. The availability of accurate observations and ocean velocity fields, which are representative of the ocean state, open new possibilities to address important ocean challenges. We will describe two selected ocean applications, based on the analysis of ocean velocity data with dynamical system tools called Lagrangian Coherent Structures, that confirm the synergy and success of this combination.
The results described in [1] have confirmed that Lagrangian Coherent Structures provided a dynamical template that allowed an effective glider path planning for Silbo, one of the first transoceanic autonomous underwater vehicle missions that took place in the North Atlantic, and supported achieving unprecedented speed ups of the glider. Additionally the evolution of the fuel spill subsequent to the sinking of the Oleg Naydenov fishing ship in the Gran Canaria coast, Spain in April 2015, confirmed that quasi true color images jointly with this dynamical template, accurately described the long-time behavior of fuel blobs, identifying potentially dangerous regions for these types of oil spill disasters and the arrival points of oil slicks to the coast [2].
Finally we will briefly discuss prospective applications of these tools in coastal waste monitoring and Atlantic atmospheric contexts.

References
[1] A. G. Ramos, V. J. García-Garrido, A. M. Mancho, S. Wiggins, J. Coca, S. Glenn, O. Schofield, J. Kohut, D. Aragon, J. Kerfoot, T. Haskins, T. Miles, C. Haldeman, N. Strandskov, B. Allsup, C. Jones, J. Shapiro. Lagrangian coherent structure assisted path planning for transoceanic autonomous underwater vehicle missions. Sci. Rep. 8, 4575 (2018).
[2] V. J. Garcia-Garrido, A. Ramos, A. M. Mancho, J. Coca, S. Wiggins. A dynamical systems perspective for a real-time response to a marine oil spill. Mar. Pollut. Bull. 112, 201-210, (2016).

The Atlantic Ocean has a unique feature. In the different hemispheres, it has completely different results of cyclogenesis. For example, in the Northern Hemisphere we observe hurricanes of varying severity, often leading to significant destruction. But in the Southern Hemisphere these hurricanes are practically absent. As we know, in the Atlantic Ocean specific water circulation influences the temperature background of surface waters. Temperature is one of the most important characteristics of cyclogenesis formation. However, we observe the absence of tropical cyclones when the ocean surface is warm enough for hurricanes creation. Apparently there is clearly the presence of another possible factor - salinity. Salinity is the main component of another parameter – density of water. Water circulation is dependant on water density. The author used the data of the Aquarius/SAC-D mission, launched on June 10, 2011. The mission was a joint venture between NASA and the Argentinean Space Agency (CONAE). The mission featured the sea surface salinity sensor Aquarius and was the first mission with the primary goal of measuring sea surface salinity (SSS) from space. Using these data we can understand why in different hemispheres with huge salinity in both hemispheres we observe the different result in hurricanes formation.

The Copernicus Atlantic Meridional Transect for Sentinel Fiducial Reference Measurements (AMT4SentinelFRM) collected high FRMs for the validation of a range of Sentinel-1, -2A, -2B, -3A and -3B products during annual voyages between the UK and the South Atlantic during September to November 2016 and 2017. AMT4SentinelFRM builds on the Atlantic Meridional Transect programme which has been running for 28 years and was established in 1995 in collaboration with NASA, as an independent platform to validate SeaWiFS Ocean Colour data. It not only provided vital FRMs for the duration of the SeaWiFS mission, but also served as a developmental and inter-comparison platform for selecting the most accurate ocean-colour algorithm for SeaWiFS. AMT4SentinelFRM has now developed the programme into a multi-sensor, multi-mission platform for satellite validation. In this paper we validate Sentinel-3A OLCI, VIIRS and MODIS-Aqua algorithms in the Atlantic Ocean including the oligotrophic, open ocean waters of the north and south Atlantic oligotrophic gyres, the productive waters of the Celtic Sea, south America and equatorial upwelling zone, coastal regions of the North Sea, western English channel and Patagonian shelf. We firstly quantify differences between sensors used on the different campaigns, then present an uncertainty budget for the radiometric measurements. Finally we evaluate a range of different atmospheric correction processors for Sentinel-3A OLCI to identify the most accurate in different regions. For the Atlantic Ocean, traditional analysis of water samples for HPLC Chlorophyll-a are complemented with an underway measurement system that collects along track particulate absorption measurements to estimate surface chlorophyll concentration with high accuracy (± 10% relative error). These quasi-continuous measurements maximise the spatial and temporal frequency of data acquisition to 40,000 underway minute-binned optical measurements, which in turn enhances the number of potential in situ match-ups with satellite data to approximately 300 match-ups. This allows us to assess problems related to the spatial-resolution of the sensor and provides data for a comprehensive comparison with NASA VIIRS and MODIS-Aqua satellites.

Three major examples of western boundary retroflection regions occur in the tropical and South Atlantic: the North Brazil Current Retroflection, the Brazil-Malvinas Confluence and the Agulhas Current Retroflection. These three regions are characterized by the offshore diversion of a major boundary current, which sets the intensity of the returning limb of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation. Here, we combine the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) sea-surface salinity (SSS) satellite products (generated at the Barcelona Expert Center) with high-resolution numerical model and in situ measurements, in order to quantify the seasonal changes in surface currents and transports. The analysis of the model data shows that the largest horizontal SSS gradients coincide with those areas of highest velocities, with the median velocity vector being 90º anticlockwise (clockwise) from the horizontal SSS gradient in the northern (southern) hemisphere. The application of these results to the SSS satellite data allows obtaining water velocity and salt flux patterns, which are then used to estimate what fraction of the western boundary water and salt transports get retroflected.

The Southern Ocean (SO), directly connected to the global ocean through the Atlantic, the Indian and the Pacific basins, may be responsible for transporting vast amounts of salt, heat and nutrients across basins, which in turn might have a direct influence in the global climate. According to the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) predictions, a freshening around the Antarctic coast which can change the ocean dynamics around the Antarctic Peninsula is possible. However these predictions are hampered by the limited number of in situ temperature and salinity observations. the development of reliable satellite observation systems for sea surface salinity (SSS) and sea surface temperature at high southern latitudes can therefore contribute to improve the CMIP5 inter-annual variability and trends, as well as the understanding of the dynamics associated with the SO seasonal and intra-seasonal variability.

The Barcelona Expert Centre (BEC) has generated an enhanced SO SSS dataset (2011-2018) from the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission. The new SMOS SSS product is validated in the SO region against both in situ and an ocean reanalysis (ARMOR), model (GLORYS), and climatology (WOA) data. The in situ database comprises a suite of Fiducial Reference Measurements (FRM) which include ARGO floats, marine mammals observant and ship based observations (e.g., CTD, TSG, etc.) which have been collected by different research vessels (e.g. the Astrolabe, Hesperides, Agulhas, Agulhas II, and Akademik Treshnikov) over their Southern Ocean crossings. We have assessed the SMOS salinity fields in three different bands: Subantarctic, Antarctic and Subpolar bands. ARMOR, GLORYS, WOA and SMOS are in good agreement in the Subantarctic and Antarctic bands (with SMOS discrepancies of +/-0.1 psu). In the Subpolar bands SMOS is in better agreement with GLORYS than with ARMOR and WOA. In this region both, GLORYS and SMOS show fresher salinity fields and larger salinity variations than WOA and ARMOR. Regarding comparison with TSG, SMOS is able to capture fresh and saline plumes in the Weddell Sea, which are not captured by any of the other analysed products (ARMOR, GLORYS and WOA).

The sparse number of in-situ measurements of Sea Surface Salinity (SSS) in the Arctic Ocean renders remote sensing platforms an invaluable tool to retrieve such variable. Recently, the Barcelona Expert Center (BEC) has deployed their version 2 of SSS Arctic data retrieved from Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity mission (SMOS). The new salinity maps cover the 2011-2017 period in time and from 50°N to the North Pole in space, with a space-time resolution of 25 km and 9 days [1]. This spatial coverage includes zones of the North Atlantic Ocean of special interest. It is worth noting, the Hudson Bay, whose drainage basin collects most of the Canadian fresh water; the Greenland Sea and the Labrador Sea, of great climatological interest since they receive directly the freshwater supplied by melting processes; and the North Sea, that accounts important international, commercial fisheries and currently contains the highest number of offshore oil rigs in the world.

The Arctic and North Atlantic regions are challenging zones to retrieve SSS from remote sensing measures, mainly due to the low sensitivity of SSS to the L-band Brightness Temperatures (TB) measured by satellites when sea surface temperature is too low. Even worse, the eastern part of North Atlantic is highly contaminated by Radio Frequency Interferences (RFI) emitted in L-band as result of human activity. Additionally, close to the coast SMOS is affected by the so-called Land-Sea contamination due to the large difference of TB between the land and the ocean. Despite of those challenges, the current BEC product provides good spatial coverage --even close to the ice edge-- and rather accurate values.

The regional comparison between the SSS retrieved from SMOS and the close-to surface salinities provided by Argo profiles provides for the North Atlantic region (defined by a latitude range of [50°N:60°N] and a longitude range of [50°W:20°W]) a mean difference of 0.01 psu and a standard deviation (STD) of 0.35 psu; for the Denmark Strait the STD is reduced to 0.24 psu, and a mean difference of 0.03 psu; and for the Northern Sea we obtain a mean of -0.05 psu and STD of 0.29 psu.

The discharge of the main Arctic rivers (Mackenzie and Ob) is also better characterized with this new version of the BEC product, as compared with previous remote sensed SSS Arctic products.

BEC – together with ARGANS Ltd. and Home Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Center (NERSC)-- is involved in the recent ESA’s Arctic+ Salinity project. The primary objectives of Arctic+ Salinity are to explore, develop and validate novel approaches to enhance SSS measurements on the Arctic from SMOS and SMAP (Soil Moisture Active Passive) missions and to better observe and characterize Arctic salinity dynamics and its links with Arctic processes (ocean circulation, E-P), especially its connection to land-ocean fresh water fluxes at regional scale. In the context of this project, BEC will implement, among others, new noise reduction techniques in the retrieved SSS with the aim of improving general quality especially close to the coast. Therefore, we expect to show also the improvements attained so far, in mesoscale salinity changes due to freshwater fluxes in semi-enclosed regions like the North Sea.

[1] E. Olmedo et al. "Seven Years of SMOS Sea Surface Salinity at High Latitudes: Variability in Arctic and Sub-Arctic Regions", Remote Sensing, 2018, 10,1772 doi:10.3390/rs10111772

In this paper we present the first decadal reanalysis simulation of the biogeochemistry of the North East Atlantic, along with a full evaluation of its skill and value. An error-characterized satellite product for chlorophyll (from the ESA's Climate Change Initiative - Ocean Colour) was assimilated into a coupled physical-biogeochemical model, applying a localized Ensemble Kalman filter. The results showed that the reanalysis improved the model predictions of assimilated chlorophyll in 60% of the study region. Model validation metrics showed that the reanalysis had skill in matching a large dataset of in situ observations for ten ecosystem variables. Spearman rank correlations were significant and higher than 0.7 for physical-chemical variables (temperature, salinity, oxygen), ~0.6 for chlorophyll and nutrients (phosphate, nitrate, silicate), and significant, though lower in value, for partial pressure of dissolved carbon dioxide (~0.4). The reanalysis captured the magnitude of pH and ammonia observations, but not their variability. The value of the reanalysis for assessing ecosystem environmental status and variability has been exemplified in two case studies. The first shows that between 340,000-380,000 km2 of shelf bottom waters were oxygen deficient potentially threatening bottom fishes and benthos. The second application confirmed that the shelf is a net sink of atmospheric carbon dioxide, but the total amount of uptake varies between 36-46 Tg C yr-1 at a 90% confidence level. These results indicate that the reanalysis output dataset can inform the management of the North East Atlantic ecosystem, in relation to eutrophication, fishery, and variability of the carbon cycle.

Using a large dataset collected in the North Atlantic, we developed a method to estimate the chlorophyll concentration of four phytoplankton groups (phytoplankton functional types, PFTs) from ocean colour satellite data. The PFTs were chosen to match those used in the ERSEM model. The method incorporates the influence of sea surface temperature, also available from satellite data, on model parameters and on the partitioning of microphytoplankton into diatoms and dinoflagellates. The method was validated using independent dataset and adapted to provide per-pixel uncertainty estimates. The estimated concentrations for PFTs surface chlorophyll were assimilated to physical-biogeochemical model (NEMO-FABM-ERSEM) and used for operational forecasting of biogeochemistry in the North‐West European (NWE) Shelf. PFTs Data Assimilation (DA) was compared with total chlorophyll DA and the reference run. We show that apart of improving the total chlorophyll, PFTs DA has potential to also improve the representation of phytoplankton community structure both in the reanalysis and in the 5-day forecast. By validating the results with in situ data have shown that PFTs DA has significant positive impact on pCO2 (with potential impact on carbon cycle).

Ecosystem-based stewardship of marine resources has to be knowledge based. Ocean-colour remote sensing provides our only window into the marine ecosystem for acquisition of relevant data on synoptic scales. But to optimize the use of Earth observation from satellites, we also need access to in situ data. For the North Atlantic Ocean, we have the richest data sets anywhere in the world of the in situ information that complements EO data to give excellent retrieval of useful products from ocean-colour imagery. For example, to estimate primary production, the most fundamental property for any discussion of marine resources, including fisheries, we need in situ data on photosynthesis parameters. The largest repository of such data is that assembled for the North Atlantic. Similarly, for high-latitude data on the marine ecosystem, the most complete data bank is that for the North Atlantic; it is vital for forecasting ecosystem changes as the Arctic ice cover diminishes. Therefore, the Atlantic Ocean provides us with the best of all study areas for investigating how to optimize the use of EO data to address questions relating to ecosystem services and natural capital in a changing climate, especially in high latitudes. In addition, there are many related scientific questions that can also be addressed to the best effect in the North Atlantic. These include the role of picoplankton in the marine ecosystem, the relation between chlorophyll and carbon in phytoplankton, and the assignment of photosynthesis parameters in operational mode using EO. All in all, the North Atlantic is the prime study area to broaden the range of applications of EO data in management of marine resources and natural capital, and to increase the quality of the products for the benefit of society. This work benefited from earlier ESA projects (OC-CCI, MAPPS, PPP and POCO).

The Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service (CMEMS) is the Copernicus EU information service dedicated to the observation of the marine environment and the dissemination of satellite Earth Observation and in-situ data for the global ocean, with an emphasis in the European regional seas. In particular, the CMEMS Ocean Colour Thematic Assembly Centre (OC- TAC) is responsible for the production of a suite of state-of-the-art ocean colour products for the Atlantic Ocean, such as chlorophyll concentration and remote sensing reflectances. In this work we analyse the CMEMS OC-TAC 20-year (1997-2017) chlorophyll concentration time series, based on the global, multisensor, climate-grade Ocean Colour dataset produced by ESA's Ocean Colour Climate Change Initiative (OC-CCI). To obtain the most accurate possible representation of the phytoplankton dynamics in the regional seas, the OC-TAC develops regional chlorophyll algorithms that are then applied to OC-CCI remote sensing reflectances. The resulting dataset has been proven to be fit for climate research (Mélin, 2017), allowing us to investigate regional annual and interdecadal variability, to compute climatologies from which anomalies can be detected, and to derive long-term trends. We exploit these long time series to also study the trends in the spatial extent of the Atlantic Ocean oligotrophic gyres, and to assess the relationship between chlorophyll concentration and climate indices such as the North Atlantic Oscillation. These results are extended yearly and released within the Ocean Colour contribution to the CMEMS Ocean State Report, and will be available as Ocean Monitoring Indicator (OMI) products as part of the CMEMS catalogue coinciding with its next release.

Most current approaches to study primary production in the pelagic ocean either focus on narrow domains in time and space or are based on the concept that stocks can be used to estimate fluxes. While the latter approach has been highly successful in satellite oceanography when approaching questions that focuses on long time scales (seasonal -- decadal), it is of limited use to explore faster processes. There is also a tendency to approach biological processes in the ocean with the assumption that physical advection and dispersal is irrelevant to a first order. To address these challenges, we suggest a couple of new approaches to analyze satellite derived data.

In this presentation I will present work where we apply Lagrangian approaches to bridge different temporal and spatial scales and include physical transport. The approach allows for directly assessing changes in satellite derived fields and to assess links between planktonic community structure, productivity, and export efficiency across different ocean biomes. I will also suggest a new method to asses the dominating timescales of variability in phytoplankton biomass and its potential implications on ecosystem efficiency.

Biogeochemical and Bio-optical measurements have been made during the summers of 2016-2018 along the Northwest European continental shelf, from the Celtic Sea to the Herbridean islands, as part of a combined field and remote sensing study into the biogeochemistry of this region. Current research themes are as follows: (i) Nutrient controls on primary productivity. (ii) The influence of Irish rivers on CDOM in this region (iii) Development of a regional algorithm for chlorophyll (Sentinel 3). (iv) Determination of origin of natural surface slicks (Sentinel 1) and (v) Harmful Algal bloom detection (Sentinel 1 and 3). This presentation will provide an overview of the project along with preliminary results from the most recent survey of the summer of 2018. Fieldwork is performed during the annual WESPAS (Western European Shelf Pelagic Acoustic Survey) expedition carried out by the Marine Institute onboard the RV Celtic Explorer. This work forms part of the Marine spoke activities of the SFI research iCRAG (Irish Centre for Research in Applied Geosciences).

Recent developments in global datasets and model representation of the ocean-atmosphere freshwater flux (E-P), and its connection to ocean salinity will be reviewed and some new results using the latest products (e.g. ERA5) will be presented. Particular consideration will be given to the use of datasets and models to investigate salinity changes since 1950 and their connection to changing E-P. The robustness of the wet gets wetter / dry gets drier paradigm according to which salinity increases (decreases) in evaporation (precipitation) dominated regions will be assessed with particular reference to signals that are common across different datasets. The most robust signal will be shown to be that of increased E-P in the southern hemisphere subtropical that is closely linked to increasing salinity in these regions.

In addition, variability on shorter interannual to decadal timescales within the SMOS era beginning in 2010 will be considered with a particular focus on Atlantic Tropical and mid-high latitude processes. Early analysis of observations from the SMOS satellite that revealed new aspects of Tropical Atlantic sea surface salinity (SSS) variability will be revisited and placed in the context of subsequent work. In particular, the out-of-phase seasonal compensation between eastern and western basin SSS regions of strong variability identified with the first few years of SMOS data will be reassessed together with the driving processes E-P and river outflow (R). Finally, salinity signals at higher latitudes – especially the subpolar gyre – in recent years will be discussed including potential links of an unusually low salinity feature (the Big Fresh Blob) to the 2014-16 cold anomaly (Josey et al., 2018).

Josey, S. A., J. J.-M. Hirschi, B. Sinha, Duchez, A., J. P. Grist and R. Marsh, 2018: The Recent Atlantic Cold Anomaly: Causes, Consequences and Related Phenomena, Annual Reviews of Marine Science, doi.org/10.1146/annurev-marine-121916-063102.

Reliable information regarding marine wind and wave data is very essential for a vast range of coastal and marine activities. Advanced numerical weather prediction (NWP) models are run at weather forecasting centres to provide this information as forecast (future state), analysis (almost current state) or reanalysis (past state). ECMWF is a world leader in the NWP field using the Integrated Forecast System (IFS) which is a comprehensive atmospheric forecasting-system software simulating the dynamics, thermodynamics and composition of the Earth's fluid envelope and interacting parts of the Earth-system. The system includes an atmospheric, an ocean wave, an ocean circulation and a sophisticated data assimilation components. The current ECMWF model configuration discretises the Earth surface into a grid with a resolution as fine as 8 km (for the atmospheric forecast model but lower resolutions for the other components). This resolution is refined every 5 or so years and the next resolution is expected to be around 5 km. This resolution is suitable for a wide range of applications.
In order to achieve the best analyses and forecasts, IFS relies on high quality observations to estimate the initial state. Operational satellite measurements using instruments like Radar Altimeters (RA) for wind speed and significant wave height, Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) for waves (and possibly wind) and Scatterometers (SCAT) for wind velocity vectors have been available since early 1990’s. Such data have been assimilated in IFS since then.
Although IFS has a global domain, observations in the Atlantic Region, especially in its northern part, are very important. Many ECMWF member states are within that region.
The importance of the currently available observations in the Atlantic Region for the marine wind and wave analysis and forecast will be reviewed. The current gaps in the satellite data availability in the region and the future needs for such data will be identified.

The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) is a critical component of the global climate system, transporting heat northwards throughout the Atlantic and sequestering anthropogenic carbon in the deep ocean. Under global warming the AMOC is predicted to decline with potential impacts on sea level, hurricane formation, storm tracks, temperatures and precipitation in the North Atlantic region. As a result, a number of basin-wide in situ observing systems have been deployed, such a RAPID 26˚N in the subtropical gyre (from 2004) and more recently OSNAP in the subpolar gyre (from 2014), to detect changes that may be occurring. To obtain a meridionally coherent picture of the changing AMOC would require in situ measurements at many locations. As this would be costly, satellite observations have been used to study the AMOC. In particular, altimetric sea surface height and gravimetric bottom pressure measurements have been employed, either on their own or in combination with in situ data, such as that from Argo floats. Here we will review the satellite measurements of AMOC made to-date, noting their benefits and limitations, and then discuss the requirements for improved AMOC observation from space in the future.

The north Atlantic Ocean is regularly traversed by extratropical cyclones and winter low pressure systems originated in the Western part of the basin that can potentially generate dangerous extreme sea states. The region where these extreme sea states occur is linked to the tracks of the low-pressure systems in the north Atlantic basin. The variability of this storm tracks presents a primary dipole pattern with centers in the extreme northeastern Atlantic and west of Portugal. Extreme sea states are usually generated by storms that can traverse whole ocean basins and generate high-energy swells that can propagate for thousands of kilometers. Additionally, rogue waves are a recognized source of extreme waves that needs to be considered when designing for operation at sea.
This study aims at the spatial distribution of the mean wave significant wave height inside the extratropical cyclones. The study covers a 20 year period based on all satellite missions available.

Climate Resilience is understood as the ability to anticipate, absorb, accommodate or recover from climate change in a timely and efficient manner. In order to address Climate Resilience over the Atlantic region, we propose an innovative and efficient approach: to promote satellite based environmental information in the regional and global programs.

This new paradigm is primarily based on supporting third-party entities operating in the area: instead of providing external support in terms of projects, resources, knowledge and team; we consider that the effort should evolve towards local / regional bodies (with a traditional label of ‘limited’) executing autonomously self-sustainable operations.

Our implementation plan is structured along 4 pillars:
• Development of a prominent knowledge of the downstream stage of the chain (Climate Resilience related indicators and monitoring procedures) and a network of points of contacts at all levels (local, national, regional, international) that can complement project knowledge from different views.
• Implementation of an experienced and skilled capacity building plan with insights in local heterogeneities (cultural, procedural, knowledge heritage, R&D capacity) to properly shell the message.
• Rely on outstanding, mature and operationally ready technological solutions.
• Definition of a set of use cases that can be easily reproduced by the local / regional agencies (the real receivers of capacity building) from a technological (adapted to the available ICT resources) and technical (adapted to the available knowledge) point of view.

Climate Change is a world-class problems, which requires of long-term and sustainable approaches for defining resilience actions at local level. In order to minimize the dependency of local/regional agencies of external organizations, we propose an approach based on transferring knowledge to most relevant and deserved actors (regional agencies, local service providers…) with a clear benefit to make them capable of guiding long-term exploitation of EO-based services over the Atlantic region.

In 2015 the UN members agreed upon a new set of strategies to promote a sustainable development, defining 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to be achieved over the next 15 years. Earth Observation (EO) data and monitoring systems have proven to be an effective solution for a deepened understanding of the marine environment and, as a result, a better response to emerging challenges. The AtlanticGEOSS is an initiative proposed in the context the Atlantic Research Centre (AIR-Centre), focusing on an integrated approach for Earth Observation based services. It will be proposed as an official GEO Initiative to the Group of Earth Observations in 1Q19.
The goals of the AtlanticGEOSS are to develop an integrated EO framework that promotes collaboration and growth within the Atlantic countries, and to engage with communities to identify and potentiate opportunities for EO information and services, serving the region’s societal needs.
The AtlanticGEOSS is focused on Marine, Maritime and Coastal application areas, such as monitoring marine biodiversity and protected areas, fishing and aquaculture, and marine spatial planning. Geographically, the initiative is based on the extension to the South Atlantic of the Galway Statement - the Belém Statement, signed between the EC, South Africa and Brazil. The initiative comprises institutions from many Atlantic states from Europe, Africa and America, in order to facilitate the creation of value-added services for federated users in support to decision-making processes.
The four pillars of the AtlanticGEOSS are 1) federating user needs for the Atlantic leveraged mostly on the AIR-Centre extensive network; 2) matching the user needs with solid Earth observation technologic and scientific players in Atlantic bordering countries; 3) engaging International and National Funding Institutions to support the initiatives with highest impact; 4) promote dedicated capacity building to ensure the local and widespread sustainability of the activities.

Marine Park is a collaborative space for the development of marine innovation projects and start ups with its business related to the sea and the Blue economy. This center is managed by a private non-profit association, Emerge, and two public entities collaborate with it, the City of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, through the Sea City of department and the Government of the Canary Islands, through Sodecan

Its location next to the beach of Las Alcaravaneras and near the third largest port in Spain, the La Luz and Las Palmas, allows to test products and services with low cost and global scalability, making numerous companies both local or international (i.e. United States or Israel) are interested in their business model and are currently collaborating in multiple fields.

Among those collaborations, the Protoatlantic INTERREG Atlantic Area project project that brings together similar centers from five countries of the European Atlantic Arc in order to scale and cooperate their entrepreneurial vision, generating a network of centers business and European start-ups linked to the blue economy.

ProtoAtlantic will develop a model for the prototyping and exploitation of innovative ideas in the maritime sector. The project will focus on three well-defined sectors: Renewable Energy, Marine Robotics and Blue biotechnologies.

ProtoAtlantic will identify product innovation capacity in the maritime sector willing to address emerging markets in a co-creation model with start-up communities, research centres, universities and Local Authorities. The project exploits existing co-working facilities and blue acceleration programs specialized in the marine sector and replicates success stories.

Marine-EO, a Horizon2020 funded project in its second year of implementation by a consortium of maritime countries - Portugal (Azores and Mainland), Spain, Norway and Greece - teams up a group of five maritime authorities (the Buyers Group) and four prestigious scientific and technical organizations with significant experience in Earth Observation and maritime affairs.
The consortium faces the challenge of acquiring competitive Copernicus based innovative maritime awareness services, through a Pre-Commercial Procurement (PCP) process that encompasses two thematic areas –Environmental Monitoring and Security.
Solutions found by the private entities competing in this process are expected to contribute to the Common Information Sharing System and other relevant frameworks related to maritime awareness.
In summary, the project fosters the development of satellite-based innovative products and services, while simultaneously enabling public authorities to (i) pursue a shared and comprehensive approach to maritime security risk analysis and (ii) to make an informed and timely decision, benefitting from cost efficiency GEOINT (geospatial-intelligence) production.
Successful implementation of the PCP will allow for a large-scale deployment of innovative solutions linked to the use of European Structural and Investment Funds.
Several \"High-Level Scenarios\" will be prepared for the post-Marine-EO period to provide the EU’s EO maritime surveillance services cooperation umbrella.

Atlantic countries and regions, namely small Atlantic islands and emerging economies, need to be ready to take complete advantage of the prolific amount of Earth observation data that is available from multiple satellite missions as well as other observational platforms, and convert them efficiently into services that can support decision-making for end users. Within this context, how can Earth Observation support sustainable development in the Atlantic region and what is the role of the AIR Centre?

Recognising that Earth observations are a means to an end, the AIR Centre acknowledges that there are many existing long lasting national and international organisations and programmes aimed at developing Earth observation capacity, such as ESA, Copernicus, GOOS, INPE, SANSA, GEO Blue Planet, UNOOSA, to name only a few. The AIR Centre is poised to work with and along all of these initiatives and will not replace nor duplicate the existing efforts.

The AIR Centre is ideally placed to enable a process whereby the needs in terms of data, information and services of the Atlantic Ocean countries are identified. These requirements can be of local, national or regional scales and can stretch between many different sectors of society.

The AIR Centre therefore aims to set-up a collaborative framework to identify, consolidate, sustain, stimulate, promote and build capacity for existing EO based services of use for Atlantic Ocean countries; new EO based services which can be implemented from existing EO data; and future EO based services to be developed with novel EO datasets and platforms.

The AIR Centre’s comprehensive approach to Earth observation will therefore include: partnering with global/regional actors; participating in global/regional networks; understanding user needs; supporting the integration of satellite imagery, in-situ observation data through assimilative, predictive numerical models; stimulating new sensing technologies and methods; fostering cutting-edge data science: artificial intelligence, deep learning, deploying new satellite constellations; promoting capacity and institution building; providing new services and products, and disseminating useful information

This presentation aims to inform about the AIR Centre’s Earth observation programmatic strategy; to communicate priority areas of needs for Earth Observation-based services; and to discuss medium to long term implementation roadmap.

The Oceanic Platform of the Canary Islands (PLOCAN) is a joint initiative between the Spanish and the Canary Islands governments, with the support of the European Regional Development Fund. It represents a multipurpose service centre with land-based and sea-based novel infrastructures to support research, technology development an innovation in the marine and maritime sector. Its mission is to promote long-term observation and sustainability of the ocean, providing a cost-effective combination of services, such as observatories, test site, base for underwater vehicles, training and innovation hub.
PLOCAN has extensive experience in research and development activities in fields such us Ocean and Wind Energy, Ocean Observing and Monitoring Systems, including autonomous vehicles and the management of metoceanographic data. In particular, PLOCAN contributes with the hosting of equipment, devices and marine technologies, for testing, validation and demonstration activities and/or any other necessary experiments in its marine test site. The housing services imply rights and regulated conditions to use the facilities and its 23Km2 of marine test area, as well as associated services such as transport, installation, maintenance, monitoring, decommissioning, permits, accommodation, and insurance among others.

Marine South East together with three other clusters, the Aerospace Technological District (DTA) of Apulia Region (Italy), Pole Mer Mediterranee and Aerospace Valley from France, are bringing together their respective expertise in Earth Observation and Blue Growth to build the framework for a European Strategic Cluster Partnership (ESCP – 4i) called SpaceWave.

SpaceWave, which is co-funded by the COSME project of the European Union, aims to support SMEs through an internationalisation plan to accelerate the use of Earth Observation technologies to offer solutions for challenges within the Blue Growth Economy. The project has looked at the specific areas of sea fisheries, aquaculture, surveillance and monitoring of sea-level rise and coastal erosion, maritime traffic, ports infrastructures and the surveillance of EEZs.

The SpaceWave consortium would like to present the first results from the project with details of the most promising technologies and appropriate clusters and business networks to work with in targeted countries. In addition, the consortium would like to promote its internationalisation strategy for cluster cooperation between Aerospace Clusters and Blue Growth Clusters and SME access to global markets for Earth Observation and related services.

speech from Oxford Martin Programme on Sustainable Oceans.

The New European Wind Atlas (NEWA) is a joint effort of research agencies from eight European countries, leading to the creation and publication of a European wind atlas in electronic form. One of the main objectives of the NEWA project is to create an offshore wind atlas extending 100 km from the European coasts. To achieve this, mesoscale models along with various observational datasets are utilised. Satellite wind retrievals from scatterometers and Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) instruments were used to calculate offshore wind resources at 10 m and later extrapolated to 100 m.
The aim of this study is to demonstrate the use and applicability of EO data for ocean surface winds for wind energy related applications.

Rheticus® Marine is an automatic cloud-based geo-information service designed by Planetek Italia to deliver fresh and accurate satellite-based data and information for the monitoring of coastal seawater quality and marine resources. It is based on satellite open data, such as the ones from AQUA/TERRA, Sentinel-2 and Sentinel-3 missions and from E.U. CMEMS.
At European level the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) requires Member States to reach Good Environmental Status (GES) through the evaluation and improvement of 11 qualitative Descriptors among which Eutrophication. Rheticus® Marine uses CMEMS derived historical series of water quality parameters to identify sea areas that are homogeneous in terms of eutrophic behaviour and so are eligible for the determination of the MSFD zones where to perform the assessment of the GES. The designed service is tailored according to the needs expressed by the Italian authorities responsible for the MSFD implementation and it has obtained a high successful feedback from them.
Another relevant sector for which Rheticus® Marine provides operational services is Aquaculture. By real time monitoring and forecasting of relevant water quality parameters (obtained from MODIS and Sentinel-3/OLCI sensors, integrating and improving CMEMS products) Rheticus® Marine supports the daily decision activities of Aquaculture farms. Furthermore it includes a model – based on machine learning algorithm trained with historical data from CMEMS and the farms operators – which can predict the level of growth of the mussels/fishes and so support the decision of the best time to harvest in order to maximize profits. A pilot project is currently running in the Adriatic sea.
A further application is the support to Desalination Plants: by combining Sentinel-2 and Sentinel-3 data, Rheticus® Marine provides real time alerts to plants’ operators about the occurrence of algae blooms together with other water quality parameters in the coastal areas and in the proximity of the plant’s water intake. This allows users to take opportune timely decisions to avoid damages and/or interruptions of plant operation as well as to abide their duties concerning the monitoring and reduction of the impact of their operations to coastal areas. A Pilot project was successfully run in United Arab Emirates.
Within EUGENIUS, a H2020 project that provides viable market based Earth Observation services in different European regions, Planetek is responsible of the marine service portfolio consisting of the mentioned Rheticus® Marine services, entirely based on Sentinel/Copernicus data.

Ocean waves generated by North atlantic storms can induce severe damages on european coasts as it was the case during the winter of 2013/2014. The brittany buoy managed by Meteo-France has recorded more than five times significant wave heights exceeding 10 meters. This work presents the recent improvement implemented for the regional wave model MFWAM dedicated to the north Atlantic ocean. We will discuss firstly the impact of the assimilation of altimeters and SAR directional wave spectra from open ocean to coastal zones. Secondly we will analyse the results on coupling between waves and ocean models developed in the frame of Copernicus Marine Service for Iberian-Biscay-Ireland (CMEMS-IBI) domain. Example of better sea surface height forecast is well observed when coupling processes are accounted during storms events Petra and Hercules in 2014. other examples regarding to the impact of ocean/waves coupling on key parameters such as sea surface temperature and surface currents will be also discussed.
Thirdly, we will discuss the impact of wind forcing from different atmospheric systems (IFS and ARPEGE) on swell forecast in the channel during storms.
Further comments and conclusions will be commented during the final presentation.

Renewable energies are growing rapidly, particularly in the North Sea. Offshore wind farms are installed at various regions of the Dutch, British, German, Danish and Belgian exclusive economic zones (EEZ). Furthermore, wave energy converters are also under. An important aspect both for wave energy converters but also for the Operation & Maintenance activities on offshore wind farms is the wave climate. ESA's GlobWave Altimeter Multimission SWH product was used to derive long-term monthly statistics of significant wave height for the North Sea. The aim of this presentation is to demonstrate the outcome and its relevance for offshore wind and wave energy applications.

Aquaculture are a very valuable asset for many coastal countries and in the future they will play an important role in food security. Satellite remote sensing can improve the temporal and geo-spatial analysis of such marine facilities. Detecting platforms used for fish and shellfish farming provides a way to monitor assets and check they do not get damaged by storms. It also allows to identify illegal placement of structures in areas which should not host farms.
In this work, we want to evaluate the potential of a new methodology that uses Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data. This is called intensity Dual-Pol Ratio Anomaly Detector (iDPolRAD). Extensive work has been carried out on detecting ships using SAR. However, the identification of smaller and non-metallic targets is still challenging especially when the sea conditions are rough. This work presents the very first test of the iDPolRAD with aquaculture structures.

The algorithm is based on the observation that the most of the maritime targets exhibit a different polarimetric behaviour compared to the sea. Specifically, the cross polarization channel and the ratio between cross- and co-polarizations (here referred to as depolarization ratio) increases. One of the reason is that complex targets (e.g. shellfish platforms) will provide scattering which will resemble Volume scattering or reflections from planes (mostly wet surfaces) with random orientations. They are therefore expected to have a polarimetric backscattering that is different from the one of the sea which is surface scattering.

We tested the iDPolRAD on a large amount of Sentinel-1. The test site is in the coastal area near Vigo, Spain. This is an area intensely exploited for the production of mussels with hundreds of platforms. The iDPolRAD seems able to increase the contrast between the sea background and the platforms allowing the identification of more platforms.

The balance between the need to assure food security to an increasing world population and a sustainable exploitation of fish stocks is a key societal pressing issue, translated into several targets of UN’s SDG14 and SDG12.

The development of integrated fishery support services based in EO and non-EO data sources will help public authorities and fishing companies towards these objectives by: a) characterizing and spatially quantifying fishing pressures; b) linking fishing activities to catch/landing registers and environmental parameters providing information on fishing yields and potential fishing areas.

The baseline necessary to develop this service is: a) engaged end users willing to co-design and adopt the service; b) inclusion of algorithms/applications provided by expert partners, applicable to different regions/fish species; c) access to EO (e.g environmental/sea state parameters) and non-EO (e.g. e-log-books or landing declarations) datasets; d) access to cloud processing resources to develop and operationalize algorithms/applications; e) components to support operations (e.g. user management, data analytics and geoportal).

Deimos aims to develop such a service, in collaboration with key partners with expertise in fisheries, oceanography and ocean biology. A demo application was developed with the Portuguese Hydrographic Institute (Hidrográfico) to characterize potential fishing areas of sardine and mackerel in Portuguese coastal areas, based in EO sea state and environmental parameters, using information on fish landings provided by fishing authorities. It’s available at simocean.pt, and ready to be co-developed with an extended end-users group. Another demo will be developed together with the Portuguese Institute of Sea and Atmosphere for deep waters pelagic species (tuna and swordfish) in the Northeast Atlantic.

This follows the work being developed collaboratively by Deimos (SIMOcean, Co-ReSyF, NextGEOSS, Marine-EO and SAGA), providing access points to marine datasets, and to a range of pre-operational and R&D services, from support to harbor navigation to coastal bathymetry and algae monitoring.

The make-up of the Atlantic, its bordering countries, and others who utilise the Atlantic’s resource and marine traffic access, together hold a complex and inter-connected set of needs. These needs are often at tension with one another, so as competition increases, may require overarching and bilateral management.

Illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing (IUU) is itself a complex subject. In the maritime environment there are various systems designed to allow a vessel to make known its location heading and other parameters. Monitoring of IUU fishing requires a variety of data sources to detect vessels in protected and licensed areas, account for cooperative vessels and focus in on uncooperative vessels.

Traditional VHF Automatic Identification System (AIS), marine radar, vessel or shoreline reporting, aerial imaging alone are insufficient and ineffective is managing vast areas of ocean. Correlating satellite imaging and satellite AIS and further combining the resultant detections with behavioural analysis fills the gap left by patrols and ground-based systems, thereby disrupting uncooperative behaviours of the vessels’ owners and providing evidential records for prosecutions where the behaviours of uncooperative vessels persist.

In this application domain, Telespazio VEGA & e-GEOS exhibit considerable experience and proprietary technology provides a well-trodden and robust modular Maritime Surveillance Platform - SEonSE (Smart Eyes on the Seas) http://www.e-geos.it/SEonSE/

SEonSE supports the detection of vessels with failed or malfunctioning GPS and/or transmitting equipment; vessels that deliberately deactivate their AIS to avoid detection; vessels that, because of their smaller size, are not under the obligation of having an on-board positioning system; as well as sport fishing vessels.

SEonSE identifies abnormal behaviours, such as trawlers in areas where trawling is forbidden; the presence of vessels in environmental protected areas; ships stationary in unusual locations; and ships sharing an unusually proximal location to one another.

SEonSE may also identify oil spills and their characteristics; relevant met-ocean information; and correlate these to obtain with high confidence the vessel and/or platform polluters.

The operational use of satellite-derived analytics for maritime applications allows worldwide ocean and sea monitoring, irrespective of whether the area is within the range of coastal surveillance systems; the behaviour of ships is cooperative or uncooperative; and the time of day.

Where detections and behavioural analysis is required in near real-time (NRT), it is possible to utilise ground-station antenna to receive, downlink, and process satellite imagery at local processing environments in the form of a Cosmo Commercial User Terminal (CUT). The Cosmo CUT provides direct reception of imagery from the COSMO-SkyMed constellation and the COSMO central archives located in Matera.

In a Cosmo CUT environment, SEonSE detections and behavioural analysis may provide rapidly distributed notifications, with specific situational awareness calls-to-action, to multiple stakeholders across the Atlantic. This NRT processing environment facilitates a greater number of interceptions, prosecutions and acts as a potent discouraging measure.

Port of Vigo is located on the Norwest of Spain, specifically in the inner of the Bay of Vigo which provide excellent natural conditions for navigation. It is highly specialized in the movement of general merchandise diverse high-valued. Total port traffic of 4,233,680 t representing a "good’s industrial value" of M 11,783.05 € and a turnover of M 25,078 €.
Presentation will introduce briefly basic port features as infrastructures, traffic lines, cargo and load/unload operative. Subsequently, it will be described the main tasks of the Sustainability and Development Department. Environmental management will be detailed focus on the efficient use of energy and resources. Port of Vigo manage high amounts of residuals daily, 80 % of them are valorised. There is also a strong compromise to reduce energy consume and increase the percentage of renewable sources.
All these activities are conducted within the context of the European Commission Strategy "Blue Growth", encouraging the investment and technological innovation in areas related to Marine Economy. Indeed, Port of Vigo has pioneered in Europe the integral implementation of Blue Growth strategy as a collective effort by all the port’s users, under the principle that Blue Economy must be forest equally by all stakeholders. Efforts are conducted to promote competitiveness, efficiency and sustainability in all the activities, installation and services.

The Port Cities of the Atlantic Area are dependent on large markets and remote centers of decision, reason why they see weakened their power of leadership. Also, due to the radial design of railway and road systems, the relationships
with the hinterland they have not reached a critical mass. In these circumstances, the economic activity located in the ports of the Atlantic Arc cities is conditioned by the liberalization and internationalization of the economy, by the economic strategies of the large maritime operators, but also by the strategies of the Port Authorities themselves and the cities in which they are located. Other factors that must be taken into account
are the industrial decline in areas where heavy industries once flourished, the necessary reorganization of port soils, changes in maritime transport and the development of logistics. However, from an urban point of view, the fight against
climate change and the defense of sustainable development are the fundamental factors that determine the reorientation of port-city relations.

Planet has launched more than 200 satellites to space and currently operates RapidEye, Dove and 13 SkySat satellites—the largest constellation ever deployed. This is enabled by a highly automated and scalable mission control and operations, as well as by the largest network of ground stations operated by any imaging company. This imagery is automatically processed via Planet’s data pipeline and Platform, and made available to users visual or analytic purposes. Planet’s proposed solution involves integrating imagery with machine learning based analytics and high resolution imagery to better understand movement and vessel activity at ports, to survey key areas of geopolitical interest for activity or change or provide additional detail on identified maritime objects of interest. Planet applies deep learning techniques to perform advanced imagery analytics to data collected by the Dove constellation. Leveraging this unique constellation provides a deep temporal and spatially broad data set covering the entire earth’s landmass including ports and maritime areas globally.

The main goal of the TOPVOYS project is to develop, test, implement and provide reliable voyage optimization capitalizing on new advances in observation-based tools and decision support system. This is based on a comprehensive view and understanding of the major challenges and deficiencies with respect to ship routing. As such, TOPVOYS aims to advance: (i) searching, accessing, downloading, processing and analyzing of near real time satellite data for surface current retrievals; (ii) operational use of sensor synergy and visualization platform; (iii) automated tools and machine-learning system for routing planning and optimization; (v) voyage undertakings and ship performance monitoring; and (vi) post-voyage analyses and assessment. The involvement of shipping companies in the consortium ensures clear hands on user requirements as well as ability to efficiently test, assess and refine the quality of the tools. The voyage optimization will have valuable impact on fuel savings and reduction in CO2, NOx and SOx emissions. These are highly compliant with the IMO regulations and the new CO2 reporting requirement for ships entering/leaving EU ports. Fuel savings and emission reductions will, moreover, clearly have a positive impact on the green environment and blue economy and altogether contribute to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, in particular to #7: Affordable and Clean Energy; #12: Responsible Consumption and Production; #13: Climate Action; and #14 Life Below Water.

The TOPVOYS (Tools for Optimizing Performance of VOYages at Sea) project is funded under the MarTERA program (ERA-NET Cofund) with their partners including Research Council of Norway (RCN), French Ministry of Environment, Energy and the Sea (MEEM), South African Department of Science and Technology (DST). The project has a duration of 36 months and kicked-off in October 2018.

It has been widely acknowledged that the North Atlantic and Arctic regions pose a number of challenges for maritime stakeholders not only in relation to the harsh conditions typically associated with these environments, but also the significant lack of communications coverage from geostationary satellites. From a maritime traffic management perspective, in the event of a vessel operating within the Arctic requiring search and rescue assistance, the limited communication network, poor infrastructure, and design limitations of satellite communications equipment pose a number of challenges for vessels seeking assistance from rescue agencies operating within the Arctic and North Atlantic regions.
For Atlantic stakeholders operating vessels within the North Atlantic and Arctic regions, the lack of accuracy in relation to hydrographic data and survey results impairs the ability of industry partners to operate safely within these regions. The absence of accurate navigational knowledge and the ongoing ever increasing environmental changes within the Arctic are suggested to be so pronounced that they have been identified despite incomplete and uncoordinated observing capabilities. Such drastic and conspicuous change, further highlights the volatile and ever evolving nature of these regions. Furthermore, this lack of adequate and coordinated pan-Arctic observation currently limits society’s capability to identify, respond to and predict the geographic extent and severity of ongoing changes. A robust Arctic observation network is therefore needed to address these limitations.
Emissions from vessels and the monitoring thereof continues to be a challenge for industry stakeholders. With numerous research sources forecasting significant increases in marine traffic density across all spectrums within these environmentally sensitive areas, the management of pollution control in the absence of monitoring technology developments, is likely to pose a number of challenges for industry stakeholders and the broader societal needs within these regions.
In relation to policy, while governing bodies and international agreements such as the Polar Code play a critical role in Arctic governance, it is individual countries that will continue to have the most influence within the region. All five Arctic nations have advanced detailed national Arctic strategies within the past six years, a sign of the increased attention the region is receiving on a national stage.
It has been widely suggested and supported that the advent of suitable space technology could, play a role in addressing the aforementioned challenges and indeed many others. Increased satellite coverage, earth observation developments, and technology innovations could play a major a role in providing safe and secure marine traffic within the North Atlantic and Arctic.
This thematic presentation will therefore set out to present some of the current challenges for Atlantic stakeholders in relation to safety and security, while also outlining policy considerations. Partners from the ARCSAR project, an EU funded initiative tasked with establishing the first Arctic and North Atlantic Security and Emergency Preparedness Network, will discuss how space technology could potentially play a major role in providing safe and secure marine vessel management and monitoring.

Vessel monitoring is made possible by combining information from different data sources that are generally divided in cooperative and non-cooperative sensors. In this study we showcase the utility of coupling Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images, as a source of non-cooperative data, and Automatic Identification System (AIS) data flows, as cooperative data. The Sentinel-1 sensor acquires systematically SAR images over areas of maritime interests and presents several assets such as the open access policy data or the availability of complex dual polarization data. The latter one leads to the scientific research and following development of new SAR vessel detection algorithms. Over areas of maritime surveillance interest, Sentinel-1 is acquiring data in the VV-VH polarization configuration. In this study we explore several polarimetric descriptors derived from the VV-VH configuration, namely the complex VV-VH coherence and descriptors derived from the Eigenvalue decomposition of the VV-VH covariance matrix. Then, we perform a complete validation of the detection performances of the VV-VH coherence descriptor issued from the processing of several S1 images and the use of AIS data as ground truth. For the experimental results, we focus on Sentinel-1 Interferometric Wide Swath images with a resolution of 20m, acquired over different areas including both coastal and open sea areas. For the coastal areas, we propose a coastline delineation algorithm based on the bimodal distribution given by the different backscattering values of the sea and land areas.

The development of the Artcic sea ice, especially during the Arctic summer, is a critical element coupling the ocean and the atmosphere and influencing marine ecology, particularly in the context of climate change. Besides the use of radar, coarse resolution satellite missions are commonly used; higher spatial resolution missions, however, play a minor role. In this context, and although optical remote sensing is temporally limited by the seasonal availability of sunlight, the Sentinel-2 (S-2) mission offers potential to retrieve geophysical parameters such as spectral albedo of snow and ice as well as information about melt processes with a spatial resolution < 30m. With a spatial coverage reaching up to almost 84° north and a high revisit rate (up to one per day), S-2 can even cope with frequent cloud cover in the Arctic.
The spatial, spectral and radiometric setting of the MSI instrument enables observations of sea ice parameters on a new level of detail. The high spatial resolution allows detailed mapping of sea ice features such as melt ponds, ridges and leads, which span a range of meters to tens of meters. Moreover, coupling S-2 data and bio-optical models allow the assessment of pond extent, depth and optically active water constituents such as chlorophyll. Expeditions with the RV Polarstern in 2017 and 2018 confirmed that the combination of enhanced spectral, spatial and resolution allows a monitoring of Arctic sea ice with its high-contrast spatial pattern of open water, snow and ice. These two expeditions served as a pilot for the international drift experiment MOSAiC (2019-2020), where spectral sea ice and pond measurements will be conducted during the summer months in the far north of the Atlantic ocean.
Currently, geographical coverage is limited to areas close to the shoreline, leaving large areas of the Arctic Ocean unrecorded. Yet, geographical coverage may be extended on request. We therefore want to demonstrate the potential of S-2 for Arctic research and further discuss the possibilities to monitor the Arctic sea ice operationally.

Abstract: In the last 50 years, plastic production has increased more than 22-fold while the global recycling rate of plastics in 2015 was only an estimated 9% . This rise in plastic production and unmanaged plastic waste has resulted a growing threat to marine environments with an estimated 5-13 million tons of plastic from land-based sources ending up in marine environments . The importance of marine plastics has been recognized in the Sustainable Development Goals through a target related to marine litter (SDG target 14.1). However, there are large gaps in knowledge in terms of understanding marine litter and microplastics: a reliable figure for the volume of plastics entering the ocean, the accumulated volume of plastics in the marine environment, mapping of the source and sink location of plastics and basic data on microplastic is currently lacking. There is a need to use existing data from remote sensing, citizen science and in situ monitoring to better understand marine litter and microplastics; however, much of the research in this field is at an initial stage and only data related to beach litter is available in many regions . This presentation will provide an update on the current state of marine litter and microplastic data and data efforts, including opportunities for using satellite data and global models to better understand the state and flow of marine litter and microplastics.

This work summarises the findings from the ESA funded OPTIMAL project. The main aim was to produce recommendations for a scientific and technical roadmap for the development of a mission for remote sensing detection of marine litter, with a focus on marine plastics. The study comprised: 1) definition of the observational needs; 2) evaluation of potential for marine plastic detection from current technology; 3) synthesis and evaluation of options to progress.
The definition of observational needs was done through consultation with the marine plastic community by a user workshop. One of the conclusions was the identification of two important observational scenarios for marine plastics detection: 1) plastics accumulated on shore, and 2) micro and macro plastics in the upper layer of the ocean. Following these recommendations, experimental and modelling work was designed and carried out to evaluate current optical remote sensing capability relevant to those scenarios. This included satellite, aircraft and in-situ observations and laboratory measurements of microplastics optical properties. This study is particularly relevant to the Atlantic, as it has been supported by in-situ observations of microplastic abundance during the Atlantic Meridional Transect (AMT) cruise. Synthesis of these results have been fed into a design roadmap design for a marine plastic detection system, and preliminary conclusions will be presented here.

Marine Litter (ML) is a major environmental issue requiring deeper insights from the scientific community for policy makers and enforcers to manage and mitigate these contaminants (GESAMP WG40, R&S93; Kershal et al, 2015). However, data gathered for ML applications at the oceans and coastal areas is very limited, and only a tiny fraction of the surface has been actually surveyed (Cozar et al, 2014; Minutes from SCOR "Flotsam" Working Group). Moreover, sampling is generally not performed routinely at time scales representative of the ML dynamics. Recent studies have proven how important a good sampling is to properly evaluate the ML budget found at our oceans (Lebreton et al, 2018).

Due to the lack of data, community is relying on the modelling of litter behaviour at the oceans, in order to estimate plausible scenarios of spatial and temporal variability of ML (Lebreton et al, 2018; Eriksen et al, 2014; Van Sebille et al, 2012). Most of those efforts are based on considering floating plastic as passive Lagrangian drifters to simulate their displacement and identify their main accumulation zones and time scales. However, data gaps and differences into the assumptions for initial conditions lead to large differences in the results (Van Sebille et al, 2015). Thus, there is a clear need to increase the information of marine litter at the surface of the oceans to properly resolve the scenarios.

The potential use of Earth Observation (EO) to detect, quantify and track ML has gathered the interest of the scientific community (Workshop on Mission Concepts for Marine Debris Sensing, Honolulu, 2016; Maximenko et al, 2016, Maximenko et al, 2018). Remote sensing can bring what is required to better understand the extension of the ML issue and its dynamics, henceforth supporting environmental agencies and regulatory organisms. The international community addresses these scientific questions in a white paper presented at the decadal OceanObs 2019 (Maximenko et al, 2018). This community paper highlights the need for an observational system for ML, including Earth Observation as one of the technologies with best characteristics for this task.

Regardless, given the heterogeneity of ML, remote sensing is likely to provide only partial information, depending on the marine domain and the characteristics of ML in it. Modelling will be required under any scenario for ML management (Workshop in Remote Sensing for Marine Litter, ESA-ESTEC 2017). The combination of in situ data and EO data from operational services -like Copernicus- can be coupled with numerical models to bring a better understanding of the ML dynamics and budgets (Lebreton et al, 2018, Brach et al, 2018, van Sebille et al, 2015), questions that remain largely unexplored so far.

However, ML modelling scenarios have shown a high dependency of our knowledge and capability to resolve the physical dynamics od the ocean (Van Sebille et al, at Challenger 2018, Newcastle, UK), which is still not well resolved in many cases (Hart-Davis et al, 2018). Particularly, sub-mesoscale phenomena have significant relevance in the results, and a lack of resolution makes difficult to obtain accurate results for litter transport and landing areas. Stokes transport, usually discarded in most hydrodynamical models for the oceans, have also an important role into the spatial dynamics of ML. These factors point towards a considerable need of increasing our knowledge of ocean physical dynamics, at least at eddy-resolving spatial scales, and with better appreciation of the sea state. Such data would be required to constrain the solutions provided by the models.

In addition, it is necessary to bring EO to obtain direct -or indirect- measurements of ML, so to help with the existing poor sampling and better connect ML dynamics with ocean dynamics. Recently, Sentinel-2 data have proven to provide a limited capability to report on ML accumulations (UKSA/SSGP – GeoInt Service for Marine Litter, GML), which is now being further investigated and coupled with models for the Mediterranean Sea (ESA/ESRIN – EO Track of Marine Litter). In situ data is also being brought to the scene for the European North Atlantic, also coupled with models (CMEMS – LitterTEP). These initiatives are thought to put in value the existing information and support our understanding of requirements for an EO approach to ML. Defining the ideal remote sensing solution is also being tackled (ESA/ESTEC – Remote Sensing for Marine Litter -RESMALI), in which a feasibility study is taking place to produce a mission concept with potential to provide optimal observation of ML from space.

In this presentation, the authors try to connect these different aspects of ML monitoring for the European Atlantic, which is highly dependent on the availability of EO data from multiple sources and variables. Results of these four projects are shown, aiming to identify the existing gaps and the need of international effort to fill them. In particular, results include the limitations we have in ML behaviour forecasting coming both from EO data and model constrains, as well as for a direct observation of ML. These aspects are being considered for the definition of an EO Mission Concept specific for ML.

Brach, Deixonne, Bernard, Durand, Desjean, Perez, Van Sebille and Ter Halle (2018). Anticyclonic eddies increase accumulation of microplastic in the North Atlantic subtropical gyre. Marine Pollution Bulletin, 126, 191-196.

Cózar, A., Echevarría, F., González-Gordillo, J. I., Irigoien, X., Úbeda, B., Hernández-León, S., ... & Fernández-de-Puelles, M. L. (2014). Plastic debris in the open ocean. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111(28), 10239-10244.

Eriksen, M., Lebreton, L. C., Carson, H. S., Thiel, M., Moore, C. J., Borerro, J. C., ... & Reisser, J. (2014). Plastic pollution in the world's oceans: more than 5 trillion plastic pieces weighing over 250,000 tons afloat at sea. PloS one, 9(12), e111913.

Hart-Davis, M. G., Backeberg, B. C., Halo, I., van Sebille, E., & Johannessen, J. A. (2018). Assessing the accuracy of satellite derived ocean currents by comparing observed and virtual buoys in the Greater Agulhas Region. Remote Sensing of Environment.

Kershaw, P. J., & Rochman, C. M. (2015). Sources, fate and effects of microplastics in the marine environment: part 2 of a global assessment. Reports and studies-IMO/FAO/Unesco-IOC/WMO/IAEA/UN/UNEP Joint Group of Experts on the Scientific Aspects of Marine Environmental Protection (GESAMP) eng no. 93.

Lebreton, L., Slat, B., Ferrari, F., Sainte-Rose, B., Aitken, J., Marthouse, R., ... & Noble, K. (2018). Evidence that the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is rapidly accumulating plastic. Scientific reports, 8(1), 4666.

Maximenko, N., Arvesen, J., Asner, G., Carlton, J., Castrence, M., Centurioni, L., ... & Crowley, M. (2017). Remote sensing of marine debris to study dynamics, balances and trends. In Preprint at https://ecocast. arc. nasa. gov/las/Reports% 20and% 20Papers/Marine-Debris-Workshop-2017. Pdf

Maximenko et al. (2018). Integrated Marine Debris Observing System (IMDOS), OceanObs 2019 (Frontiers in the Marine Science, submitted).

Van Sebille, E., England, M. H., & Froyland, G. (2012). Origin, dynamics and evolution of ocean garbage patches from observed surface drifters. Environmental Research Letters, 7(4), 044040.

Van Sebille, Wilcox, Lebreton, Maximenko, Hardesty, Van Franeker, Eriksen, Siegel, Galgani, and Law (2015). A Global Inventory of Small Floating Plastic Debris. Environmental Research Letters, 10.

Marine litter is a global concern, affecting all the oceans of the world. Every year, millions and millions of tons of litter end up in the ocean worldwide, causing environmental, economic, health and aesthetic problems. The IFADO (Innovation in the Framework of the Atlantic Deep Ocean) project aims to create new marine services to support the European Marine Strategy Framework Directive implementation with the North Atlantic Ocean as a study case. As part of this project, it is of decisive importance to identify convergence zones, pathways and main sources of marine litter in the North Atlantic Ocean. This information is essential in the perspective of preventive and cleaning actions.
The North Atlantic gyre is notably composed by the Gulf Stream on the west boundary, the North Atlantic Current, the Canary current on the south-east European coast and the North Equatorial Current. In this system, the subtropical gyre is known to be a great convergence zone. The Lagrangian particle modelling tool Opendrift, developed at the Norwegian Meteorological Institute, has been used to evidence convergence areas. The tool was fed with global ocean current maps derived from satellite observations (GlobCurrent products) or computed by an ocean circulation model (CMEMS analyses), and different scenarios of marine litter release were modelled in the North Atlantic Ocean. Indicators were developed to highlight the preferential residence zones and pathways for plastic particles. The goal was to understand the fate of plastic particles released from land (80% of marine litter that end up in the ocean are coming from land: beaches littering, river discharge...) and the trajectories of particles floating far offshore (shipping and fishing litter).
This presentation is dedicated to the capabilities of ocean current products derived from satellite observations to simulate plastic particles trajectories at a basin scale in order to validate pathways and convergence zones of floating marine litter. Comparison to results obtained with modelled ocean current shows a good consistency of both products. A time residence indicator has been built to highlight the convergence zones. Correlations between release and stranding of particles are explored in some regions of interest to help define a monitoring strategy. Further improvement of the approach are needed in order to take into account the degradation and sinking of marine litter. Moreover, indicators and diagnostics need to be enriched with analysis and statistics of the connectivity between sources and impacted areas (stranding, accumulation zones…).

Marine litter is a global problem affecting all the oceans of the world. Millions of plastics end up in the seas affecting the marine ecosystem. Several initiatives have been planned from global players towards detection, monitoring and cleaning. State of the art techniques is needed for the detection and quantification of the marine plastics in the sea water. Satellite images and Unmanned Aerial Systems (drones) and satellites can be used in this direction. Already, the scientific community and space agencies are working towards the specifications of sensors detecting and quantifying marine litter.
Here, we present the lessons learned from Plastic Litter Project 2018, a test project on detecting artificial plastic targets on the sea surface, using satellite images and Unmanned Arial Systems (drones). The project designed to examine the ability of marine litter detection from the European satellites Sentinel-2 and Sentinel-1. Drones used to detect and quantify the volume of the litter on the sea surface with dedicated cameras. Three payloads used on drones for marine litter mapping: RGB, multi-spectral and thermal cameras. Inter-comparison between data from satellites and drones released the advantages and disadvantages of the detecting systems.
Three plastic "targets" created, 10 x 10 m wide, containing: a) 3700 plastic bottles, b) 138 plastic bags and c) 200 sqm fishing net from the Marine Remote Sensing Group (https://mrsg.aegean.gr), Department of Marine Studies, University of the Aegean. The experiment was devoted to the Word Environment Day, 5th June.
Image analysis and image processing algorithms used to evaluate the ability of satellites to detect marine litter on the sea surface. Targets were clearly detected in the Sentinel-2 image, and spectral signatures were calculated for each target and each pixel of the target. The percentage coverage of plastic per pixel and their difference on the spectral signature were examined. UAV data compared with satellite images and spectral differences were highlighted. Atmospheric correction on satellite images limits the spectral difference of the plastics and limits their detection. This experiment proved the usefulness of satellite technology in fighting marine litter and deliveries the need for more extensive experiments on the cumulative oceans areas.

This communication is about "LitterDrone" project. LitterDrone is funded via the Blue-Labs program of the European commission and it aims to make a contribution to solve the problem of marine litter. Part of this problem is monitoring stranded marine litter on beaches (measuring number and type of litter elements). Monitoring results can be used to infer data on litter origin and on the influence of tides, currents and human activity. OSPAR convention is a joint European
initiative that tries to unify forces against marine pollution. Part of this convention implies that contracting parties (countries) must monitor periodically stranded marine litter on beaches. Spain has signed the convention in January 1994. Litter monitoring in Spain is nowadays implemented by human personnel counting (& picking) litter items in certain beaches at certain times (4 campaigns each year, one for each season). LitterDrone project aims to create a new and/or complementary methodology based on obtaining images from drone flights (creating orthomosaics of RGB and multiespectral images) and developing software to analyze such images to obtain results comparable to those of the manual sampling.

LitterDrone project is being developed by a consortium constituted by the University of Vigo, project leader, the company Grafinta S.A. and the Spanish Association of Marine Litter (AEBAM). The project has the support of ECOEMBES and the collaboration of "Parque Nacional Marítimo-Terrestre de las Islas Atlánticas de Galicia" (PNIAG).

Images are obtained with a UAV/RPA platform using auto-pilot over the section of interest. A photogrammetry application is used to integrate all captured image in a single global one (ortho-mosaic). Commercial software Photomodeler has been used, although there exist other options, including open-source.

Ortho-photos are processed with a CV (computer vision) application developed by ourselves. CV is mainly used because of the lack of most discriminant hyperspectral information due to the kind of cameras we are using (Sony RGB photo-camera & MicaSense RedEdge 5-band multiespectral camera).

Processing is done in two stages: first detection (colorimery), then recognition of most common objects (learned classes arerecognized using bayesian like recognizer). Human operator must revise classification results.

Satellite images could be a future line.

Gaps in scientific knowledge and the challenges of measuring the distribution of microplastic pollution in our vast ocean are compounded by the absence of a standardised methodology for accurate estimation of marine microplastic concentrations and a single platform for data sharing. For other oceanographic parameters, such as dissolved carbon dioxide and sea surface temperature, the challenges of acquiring in-situ measurements from remote areas mean that extensive areas are essentially unsampled and our understanding of critical variables remains difficult to validate.

A unique campaign to combine scientific sampling with elite sailing was undertaken during the 2017-18 Volvo Ocean Race. The initiative capitalised on the often remote route of the extreme round-the-world race to generate an internally consistent picture of microplastic distribution using a pioneering combination of sampling and analysis techniques. Direct measurements of oceanographic and environmental variables were recorded and drifter buoys were deployed in areas otherwise difficult to access for sampling. Furthermore, the high-profile race provided access to a global audience and a platform to promote awareness of ocean science.

The race research delivered in-situ measurements of salinity, temperature and chlorophyll-a to contribute to calibration and validation of satellite-based measurements. Using Raman spectroscopy microplastic particles were detected in 93% of samples collected along the route, including some of the most remote locations sampled. The highest concentrations recorded were in the South China Sea and near the south European coast.

Here we report on the distribution of microplastic along the race route and how the very successful collaboration demonstrated the efficacy of racing yachts as vessels of opportunity to capture high-quality oceanographic data. We will also describe how the cross-sector outreach of the race and its successful Sustainability Programme elevated the scientific research to a headline position, helping to prompt advocacy for ocean health by governments, industry, business leaders and media.

Ocean colour (OC) remote sensing (RS) is a powerful tool to study phytoplankton communities in synoptic temporal and spatial scales. From estuaries to the open ocean, knowledge on phytoplankton is crucial to understand the biogeochemical cycles and ecosystems functioning.
This work presents a survey of Earth Observation (EO) activities conducted at the Faculty of Sciences University of Lisbon (FCUL), focused on satellite OC data in the Northeast Atlantic, in collaboration with IPMA, Instituto Hidrográfico (IH), and CIMA-UAlgarve.
Validation activities of OC satellite products for the Iberia coast started in 2005. FCUL has been involved in setting up and curating in situ data bases for OC applications at a global scale, for the ESA projects Coastcolour and Ocean Colour Climate Change Initiative (OC-CCI).
Applications of EO to support Aquaculture are being dealt under national and European projects, for site selection, monitoring, or precocious alert of harmful algal blooms. Ongoing research on the detection of phytoplankton functional groups (PFT) will be integrated in this line of research.

EO data is a crucial tool for MSFD (Marine Strategy Framework Directive) implementation. After an initial assessment carried out in 2012, new analyses for the InterReg Atlantic Area are under development within iFADO (Innovation in the framework of the Atlantic Deep Ocean, coordinated by IST, www.ifado.eu.

The need to reach an excellency level in Portuguese EO research is addressed in H2020 project Portwims (www.portwims.org), with participation of young researchers in oceanographic cruises, for example in Atlantic Meridional Transect, contributing for obtaining high-quality fiducial reference measurements, as well as addressing a key-question regarding the potential role of Saharan dust in promoting ocean productivity and influencing the marine carbon cycle (www.dustco-online.com).
FCUL led the Sophia training project (https://www.sophia-mar.pt/en) targeting staff from governmental organisms, enhancing their skills on the use of RS data, particularly in the context of MSFD.
In summary, FCUL EO research, in close collaboration with other national and international institutions, is using RS, addressing fundamental to applied science, as well promoting the use of EO data for EU policies. The group activities suit perfectly within the objectives of this workshop.

The Portuguese Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) is about to be extended to an area that covers more than ten times its continental size. It is a big ocean territory not yet well mapped nor understood that adds to the countries’ responsibilities in terms of fulfilling EU directives towards the establishment of the Good Environmental Status (GES) of the marine waters. At the heart of GES is the monitoring of the different ocean components (physical, biogeochemical, and biological and ecosystems) for the purposes of discovery, understanding, management and protection. Improved understanding is critical to improve predictive capabilities and provide sustainable environmental stewardship of the ocean. Such understanding requires vastly expanded monitoring capabilities.
Towards this goal there are some ongoing initiatives in Portugal, which are aligned with EU objectives. In particular, the European Multidisciplinary Seafloor Observatory – Portugal (EMSO-PT) project seeks to contribute to the monitoring of the deep-ocean and to the development of innovative technological solutions for ocean exploration. EMSO-PT carries prototypical elements of a Deep Ocean Observing Strategy (DOOS), and contributing to the Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS). This presentation focuses on two example applications, understanding of regional ocean circulation and heat content changes in the context of climate change, or seafloor ecosystem disruptions in the context of pollution and seabed mining.
Ocean exploitation, namely mineral and biodiversity resources, is highly dependent on our knowledge of the deep-ocean environment, including sediment transport and ecosystems characterisation. Existing in-situ measurements are extremely sparse and therefore much denser observing networks must be implemented. Towards that direction, new efficient and affordable sensors and platforms are needed fostering state-of-the-art technological developments. Technological advances are needed that are scalable to global ocean monitoring, but that can be developed and demonstrated in a regional setting.
Various connections have been established between extreme meteorological events and deep-ocean circulation changes. Availability of high-resolution satellite data and mapping of meteo-oceanographic conditions are key ingredients for improving our understanding of the connections between surface and deep-ocean dynamics and for the development of realistic oceanographic models that can reproduce deep-ocean circulation patterns. Due to their complexity, these models increasingly require extreme-scale high-performance computing (HPC) infrastructure, novel algorithmic approaches that are being developed in computational science and engineering, as well as an advanced cyberinfrastructure for deploying cutting-edge data analytics tools.
Because of its relevance, deep ocean science in the North Atlantic, in all its facets sketched above, is one of the research foci that the UT Austin-Portugal program seeks to promote. This program, based on a joint effort between UT Austin and Portuguese universities, envisages to advance a pressing research agenda in areas of emerging international attention and relevance.

TechWorks Marine provides clients with world-class solutions to monitor the marine environment. Since 2008, the company has developed capacity in the area of remote sensing and developing value added tools for the existing client base. As a provider of in situ real time turbidity data, the company has provided information on protection of areas with high concentrations of fish farms (e.g. salmon farming) from algal blooms and jellyfish swarms, monitoring of dredging and dumping of dredge spoil at sea; planning and construction of wastewater treatment plants and long-term planning of port activities.
TechWorks Marine are currently developing a prototype web portal and app service CoastMADE (Monitoring and Assessing Dredging Environments) which combines turbidity information from satellite and in-situ data. This will provide stakeholders with detailed real time and historical information on the status of relevant dredging locations (e.g. ports and harbours) and potential effects on nearby aquaculture sites. The service will be designed for the stakeholders interested in supporting Atlantic economic development. These are a combination of industry and government organisations, including aquaculture companies, dredging companies, ports, environmental agencies and local and regional councils.
The combination of large scale monitoring via satellite and localised real time data from TechWorks Marine’s buoys will provide an optimised decision support system, created via user-driven requirements. Validation of the satellite data is performed using TechWorks Marine’s in situ turbidity measurements and the Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service in situ data. We view these activities as the start of a much larger national and international development for us in the area of Marine Earth Observation.

The Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) provides an ambitious and comprehensive framework for the definition, monitoring and achievement of a Good Environmental Status (GES) of the EU's marine waters. Currently, quantitative baseline information from satellite, in-situ and model products is available for most MSFD descriptors but it’s scattered over multiple data sources (e.g. CMEMS, Sentinel Data Hub, Copernicus Data Warehouse, EMODNET, SeaDataNet) and in different formats.

The objective of the Marine Environmental Status Monitoring service, to be developed in partnership by IPMA and Deimos, is to provide to Public Marine Authorities (PMAs) easier and better access to these oceanographic, climatological and environmental information to support them in their MSFD related operational monitoring obligations. The development will be driven by a set of user requirements defined by PMAs from Portugal, Spain, Greece and Norway in the scope of the H2020 Marine-EO project.

The service will provide a single access point to long time series of biotic and abiotic parameters relevant to the environmental status characterization of marine areas: sea state (e.g. SST, wave and wind characterization) and water quality (e.g. salinity, chlorophyll-a and suspended matter concentrations, turbidity). Output products will be customizable to the needs of the user: definition of the AOIs to cover, which parameters to monitor, required indicators for each parameter (e.g. weekly average, % of change, anomaly to a reference period), definition of possible alert thresholds and definition of classification schemes for environmental assessment thematic maps.

Its development is based on the legacy of other data access, processing, visualization and retrieval cloud platforms developed by Deimos: SIMOcean and Co-ReSyF. Those platforms provide currently single access points to key marine and coastal datasets and to a wide range of pre-operational and R&D services and applications, from support to harbor navigation and fisheries to coastal bathymetry and altimetry.

The development of offshore wind energy in Europe is rapid. There was a record of 3,148 MW of net new installed capacity in 2017. Today Europe has more the 16 GW total installed offshore wind capacity. Furthermore, new projects in the pipeline worth €7.5bn reached Final Investment Decision in 2017. The cost of offshore wind energy has decreased very fast. There is now already three offshore wind farms in planning through tenders at zero subsidy. Wind energy is competitive and will continue to help UN SDG be achieved globally. The offshore wind in Europe can power entire Europe with electricity but to develop this there is need for marine spatial planning. Satellite EO data is very useful for this. In particular, Synthetic Aperture Radar with high resolution and all-weather capabilities gives the surface winds at high spatial resolution. SAR winds are used to quantify the offshore wind farm wake effects. As example one of the so-called third generation wind farm lay-outs (i.e. large irregular lay-out) of the Anholt wind farm has been investigated recently. The wind resource observed from SAR (Envisat) prior to construction of the wind farm and the wake effect of the wind farm after construction (Sentinel-1) are compared and show the influence of the wind farm to the neighboring area. The reduction in wind speeds can also be calculated by numerical models but SAR data gives additional information. SAR data and model results compare well. The Anholt offshore wind farm - as many other offshore wind farms - is located in the coastal zone where the influence of landmasses is significant on the wind, hence on the energy production. The comparison of produced energy at the turbines with what is observed from SAR is good.

The Blue Economy approach to sustainable development supports economic growth and improvement of livelihoods, whist ensuring the continued health of coastal and marine ecosystems and the services they provide. For countries to benefit they must understand the environment and available resources and have the tools to monitor and manage them effectively. However, collecting data in marine environments can be difficult and expensive. Earth observation (EO) provides a relatively low-cost means of acquiring information essential to evidence-based planning and management.

Earth Observation for Sustainable Development, Marine and Coastal Resources (EO4SD-Marine) is a recent addition to the ESA EO4SD programme, which aims to achieve a step change in the uptake of satellite-based environmental information in development programmes supported by International Financing Institutions (IFIs). In a partnership with six other European organisations, the UK’s National Oceanography Centre is working with ESA, IFIs and their Client States to define and deliver services for five world regions, including the Caribbean and West Africa - Gulf of Guinea.

In the Caribbean we are working with two initiatives; Caribbean Oceans and Aquaculture Sustainability FaciliTy (COAST) and the Caribbean Regional Oceanscape Project (CROP), to strengthen capacity for ocean governance and coastal and marine geospatial planning in the countries of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS). In West Africa we are working with the West Africa Coastal Areas Management Programme (WACA) to strengthen resilience of coastal communities along the Atlantic coast from Mauritania to Gabon. This will be achieved through provision of EO-derived services including, inter alia: aquaculture site selection; benthic and coastal habitat mapping; coastal bathymetry; marine pollution detection and monitoring; and spatial planning support.

Here we present an overview of project implementation, with emphasis on the Atlantic regions, including details of services in support of Blue Economies and details of capacity building activities.

The AIR Centre, in coordination with the GEO Blue Planet, Future Earth Coasts and the Marine Biodiversity Network (MBON), is organising a number of cross-sectoral and cross-disciplinary meetings to better understand the information needs of governments, businesses, researchers and civil society to foster the sustainable use of marine resources and to enhance local and regional capacity for job creation and innovation in the blue economy in the Macaronesia and Sao Tome and Principe region.

The objective of these meetings can be summarised as follows: to gather needs and requirements from cross-sectorial user communities; inform local and regional stakeholders about Earth Observation (EO) technology and methods for deriving EO ocean and coastal information for use in sustainable fisheries management, aquaculture site selection and management and biodiversity monitoring; support local and regional decision makers to make use of EO ocean and coastal information to assess marine and coastal spatial planning options; identify potential marine, coastal and biodiversity initiatives for the AIR Centre and relevant partners to conduct in the Atlantic region; map capacity needs in the region for using EO ocean and coastal information, and ;identify gaps and promote capacity and institution building initiatives in the region.

These meetings are providing a very diversified initial set of information needs for using, developing and/or expanding EO ocean and coastal information services and products for fisheries, aquaculture, biodiversity and marine spatial planning. This process is seen as a first stepping stone into a series of Atlantic regional workshops aimed at the systematic development of innovative user-oriented Earth observation services and products as well as the identification of new initiatives for the AIR Centre to pursue, such as workshops covering other topical and regional areas (as the Southern-West and Southern East Atlantic).

The organisation committee of this workshop includes AIR Centre, GEO Blue Planet Initiative, Future Earth Coasts, GEO MBON, ESA, UNOOSA, Ocean Science Center Mindelo (OSCM), Regional Government of Azores, Azores Regional Foundation for Science and Technology (FRCT), Oceanic Platform of the Canary Islands (PLOCAN), Ministry of Maritime Economy of Cape Verde, and Ministry of Education, Culture and Science of Sao Tome and Principe.

Blue Economy is a concept that comprises the rise of an ad hoc governance to determine related policies that help the sustainable use of oceanic and sea resources. Blue economy seeks to promote an economic growth of coastal and non-coastal countries. Blue economy means talking about preservation of natural resources, of marine and cultural heritage, energy, food, transport, logistics, and climate change. In addition to this, seas and oceans are also strategically important for the security of the non-terrestrial borders.
The safeguarding of our seas and oceans is today studied widely. The World Bank, European Commission, United Nations are supporting initiatives and policies in this sense. Just to mention one, the United Nations included the conservation and sustainable use of the oceans, seas and marine resources among the Sustainable Development Goals.
The European Countries are also taking measures regarding the blue economy. Including its outlying regions, the EU has the world’s largest maritime territory. The Blue economy is worth €500 billion per year to the European economy and supports 5.4 million jobs. For this reason, since 2012, the European Commission has undertaken a series of steps to translate into actions the measures proposed in the Blue Growth Strategy.
In this dynamic and complex system, space has an important role. Space systems are vital tools to support knowledge and economic activities, improving the knowledge of the marine environment and guaranteeing innovation and disrupting new technologies.
The aim of the paper is to outline the existing interaction between the space and maritime domain and the way this relation stimulates economic development and social growth. The focus will be put on the downstream applications for the maritime domain in the light of the sustainable development of the coastal countries. The paper will be contextualized in the European framework of Horizon 2020 activities, considering also the growing involvement of Copernicus data. The paper will also give the picture of the uses of satellite data for humanitarian purposes, considering the massive migrant flows from the North Africa shores that involves Europe.

The conceptual framework for tailored risk and resource management focusses on regional and local spatial decision support with mobile devices.
Applied on red tide, costal regions and fishery is used describe the key elements of the conceptual IT-environment.
Furthermore capacity building and the application of Open Educational Resources (OER) are addressed to improve risk literacy.
Global Navigation Satellite System and remote sensing are integrated at the client and server side of the IT framework even for the regional adaption of OER for capacity building.
Finally a conclusion of an integrated approach for the IT-framework, standards and capacity building are presented.

Climate change provides business and society with one of the major challenges of our time. Climate data and services can facilitate strategic decisions and provide valuable approaches to risk management, and assessment and evaluation of climate action towards a climate-resilient, low-carbon and sustainable society and economy.

Europe has made large investments in satellite earth observation data products, which make a critically important contribution to our ability to measure the effects of climate change, and the knock on impact of that to the public and private sector. Moreover, such data sets offer global coverage and are freely available. We outline the two major European Earth Observation-based climate data programmes, with Telespazio VEGA UK (a Leonardo and Thales company) acting as prime contractor in both cases:

- Climate Change Initiative (CCI) Open Data Portal (ODP), funded as part of the Global Monitoring of Essential Climate Variables (GMECV) element of the European Space Agency’s Earth Watch programme.

- Climate Data Store, developed as part of the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), which is operated by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) on behalf of, and funded by, the European Commission

The ODP provides access to a wide range of climate variables, with data from 14 ECV’s across land, atmosphere and ocean domains, and a further 9 ECV’s being developed, The first version of the CDS was released in June 2018, with an initial set of ECV data-sets available and further ECV’s currently being added. CCI and C3S have complimentary objectives, with the CCI providing the cutting edge science, and the CDS providing an operational service for ECV data that can be used in value-added climate services to create societal and business benefit. The various data access protocols (Web, API, Toolsets) will be described In both initiatives, which will be important in the context of interfacing to this wealth of data sets from an Atlantic Regional Earth Observation Exploitation Platform. Both a land and ocean-based climate service will also be highlighted within the C3S that utilise data provisioned from the CDS.

Furthermore, the concept of data quality will be introduced and the importance of supplying suitable meta-data, often within the data itself, to allow the provision of information such as uncertainty, traceability, and availability. The objective is not to characterise a data-sets as “good” or “bad”, but to allow users to make informed choices about data usage, including as part of a decision making process in a climate service. These concepts are being realised through the Evaluation and Quality Control (EQC) part of the C3S, including through a project led by Telespazio VEGA UK where a best practice quality assurance framework will be defined, and climate services assessed against this framework spanning the following sectors: Energy, Water, Agriculture & Forestry, Health, Transport, Coastal Areas, Tourism, Insurance, Infrastructure, Disaster Risk.

The presentation will conclude by making some suggestions of fundamental considerations for an Atlantic Regional Earth Observation Exploitation Platform in the context of climate data / services, and associated data quality.

The Canary Islands, Spain are considered one of the best hotspots in the world to see wild marine mammals. Of the approximately 90 species in the world, 31 can be found in the Archipelago. EO data has been extensively used over the years for assisting in the management of marine mammal populations either by establishing protected areas where stakeholders’ activity will be reduced, or by minimizing the impact of anthropogenic threats. It is considered a basic and essential tool for the conservation of the species both by researchers and the government. Satellite measurements of ocean colour are the principal remote-sensing tool for measuring ocean productivity and its response to climate change/variability. Consequently, sea surface chlorophyll-a concentrations (measured as ocean colour) are often used as proxy for primary productivity. Remotely sensed environmental parameters have the potential to identify biological hotspots for cetaceans and to therefore establish or better manage areas of marine conservation priority. The ESA project, “EO_MAMMALS”, led by PLOCAN and with the collaboration of GMV and Univ. St. Andrews, will use the Sentinel S3A and S3B data to model cetacean presence. The region of interest is an area heavily targeted by the whale watching industry and centered around a zone of special conservation. The results of analysis will be incorporated in a governmental application used by different types of stakeholders such a general public, research, industry and government, as a tool for the management of marine protected areas. Finally, for future applications, this study could be extrapolated to other Macaronesian areas as well as worldwide.

Marine data are needed for many purposes: for acquiring a better scientific understanding of the marine environment, but also, increasingly, for decision-making as well as supporting ocean and coastal economic developments and business opportunities. Data must be of sufficient quality to meet the specific users’ needs. It must also be accessible in a timely manner in appropriate formats.

And yet, despite being critical, this timely access to high-quality data proves challenging. Europe’s marine data have traditionally been collected by a myriad of entities with the result that much of our data are scattered in unconnected databases and repositories. Even when data are available, often they are not compatible, making the sharing of the information and data-aggregation impossible.

To tackle those problems in 2007 the European Commission through its Directorate General for Maritime Affairs and Fisheries (DG MARE) initiated the development of the European Marine Observation and Data network (EMODnet) in the framework of the EU’s Integrated Maritime Policy and Marine Knowledge 2020 Strategy and in support of Blue Growth. Today EMODnet is comprised of more than 150 organisations which gather marine data, metadata and data products and make them more accessible for a wider range of users.

In this presentation, we will highlight the challenges we are facing in accessing high-quality marine data and will expose the best practices EMODnet is putting in place to make these more accessible for a wide range of users in the context of blue growth. Specific attention will be given to data sets which are relevant for the Atlantic Region with a number of use cases and examples.

For many months of the year, a substantial portion of the Atlantic is subject to significant aerosol burden due to uplift and transport of desert particles by trade winds. These have a significant effect of the ability of most thermal infrared sensors to provide an accurate retrieval of sea surface temperature (SST). While the relatively narrow dual-view portion of the Sentinel-3 SLSTR instrument provides a measure of robustness, SSTs from wide-swath single-view polar-orbiting (e.g. MODIS, VIIRS, AVHRR) and geostationary sensors (GOES, Meteosat) are subject to significant contamination because the currently applied regression retrieval algorithms have little to no inherent skill in addressing the problem. A new physically based retrieval method is presented that employs a deterministic approach to solving the inverse problem. The incorporation of aerosol information in the fast forward model is readily achieved by use of profile information for various species (dust, soot, sulphate, salt) and size distributions that are operationally available from various numerical weather prediction centres (e.g. ECMWF, NCEP). The various aerosol types and sizes are tailored to fit the aerosol model in the fast radiative transfer. However, use of this information is not sufficient to fully address the problem, since the aerosol amounts are often in error. The solution is to include the total column aerosol in the retrieval vector (along with SST and total column water vapour, TCWV). Doing this provides substantial benefit, even under low aerosol loadings, since aerosol-related perturbations in top-of-atmosphere brightness temperature can now be assigned to the correct state variable, rather than degrading the accuracy of SST (or TCWV). The result is not only an improved accuracy in the presence of aerosols, but also a gain in the algorithm sensitivity and therefore the total information from the satellite measurement. Aspects of the suitability of various sensors for such an approach are discussed, including case studies with MODIS, and the prospects for use with VIIRS, GOES ABI, SEVIRI, AVHRR, and the forthcoming METimage instrument.

In the last 6 years DEIMOS has been driving the Big Data approach of “​bring processing to the data​” which started from FP7 SenSyF, FP7 ENTICE, H2020 Co-ReSyF, EEAGrants SIMOcean, ESA Hydrology TEP and continuing with H2020 NextGEOSS, H2020 BETTER, H2020 MELOA, H2020 Marine-EO.

Throughout all these projects DEIMOS developed the building blocks of an exploitation Platform and has integrated on different Cloud platforms more than 20+ EO Downstream Services from more than 30+ partners, addressing different thematic domains with focus on food security, marine environment monitoring, coastal research and hydrology. DEIMOS has also gained expertise developing platform agnostic core services to facilitate the Service Providers; for example - federated user authentication and authorisation service, platform analytics services, data catalogues, user interfaces and services orchestration.

In the current context, the main objectives of an EO Big Data Platform for Marine Applications are to unlock the potential of the innovative Value Added Services using marine, EO data and information; to facilitate efficient access to Copernicus data and information through user friendly interfaces leveraged by scalable exploitation software tools powered by Big Data Technologies based on open software and standards; to ensure resilience and reliability of the overall data dissemination and exploitation services; to facilitate the uptake of the use of Copernicus and Marine data by non-traditional user communities. The platform aims to offer services encapsulating the complexity of the ICT and data layers, creating analysis ready data for the service providers.

To meet these objectives the platform relies on the capabilities delivered by the different Copernicus DIAS, linked with initiatives lead by ESA, GEO, OGC, CEOS focused on the development of interoperable cross-functional processing chains. The ESA Common Architecture linked with the OGC activities is one of the key enablers for the evolution of this platforms that will be closely followed.

The Marine Environment Monitoring is a complex cross-cutting area where Earth Observation (EO) technology can provide major contribution. MARINE-EO pre-commercial procurement (PCP) aims to establish EO-based services for the thematic areas of Marine monitoring (Lot 1) and Maritime Security (Lot 2), covering sea-basins of Mediterranean, North Atlantic and Arctic.
The MARINE-EO (PCP) is led by the National Centre for Scientific Research “Demokritos” (NCSRD) in Greece, where the Directorate-General for Maritime Policy (DGPM-Portugal) DGPM is appointed to act on behalf of a buyers group as Lead Procurer, and also the Spanish Guardia Civil (GUCI), the Hellenic Centre for Marine Research (HCMR), the Regional Fund for Science and Technology (FRCT) in Portugal and the Norwegian Coastal Administration (NCA).
Planetek Hellas, prime of a Consortium, with Planetek Italia, CMCC, KSAT and Creotech, has been awarded the MARINE-EO PCP Lot 1 project (Phase 1 and Phase 2 – in progress). The developed service will serve as a single access point (common web-based platform) where the buyers group (e.g. MARINE -EO’s partners & other MARINE Authorities/Agencies) and other End-Users can access the following three added-value downstream services:
• Ocean biotic and abiotic parameters, climatological information and historical statistics
• Fish farm monitoring
• Arctic based services
The first two services will make use of a wide set of EO based products from Copernicus under free and open license and data obtained from other freely available satellite missions in order to obtain relevant parameters on the quality of sea areas of interest. These two services will provide routinely a set of products focused on environmental monitoring and assessment of specific areas of interest, located in the marine regions of the Mediterranean Sea (Greece, Spain), the North Atlantic Ocean (Portugal – Mainland and Azores) and the Norwegian Sea (Norway). The third service will leverage on KSAT expertise to make available to the users fast and high reliable information to support concerned authorities as well as ships navigators on board the ship and private industries. This service will be running on the area covered by NAVAREA under the responsibility of Norway.

Satellite data has become, especially in recent years, an increasingly popular tool for monitoring the marine environment. This is related to the intensive development of research methods based on satellite remote sensing, a significantly increasing number of measuring instruments placed on satellite platforms, as well as easier access to data obtained with their help. This significantly increases the affordability of information relating to large areas and impossible to obtain in a different way. Often these data are made available without the need to involve significant resources by their potential recipients, as is the case with the European Copernicus program. In the case of the marine environment, which by its nature is hardly available and its monitoring usually requires the involvement of an expensive measurement and observation infrastructure, it makes it an attractive source of information for science, maritime administration and maritime economy enterprises. The value of data obtained this way will be the greater that they can be freely combined into larger resources with data from other sources already in the possession of particular stakeholders of the maritime sector. The aim of activities related to the use of this data should be to provide intelligent information (system) services, enabling the extraction of useful information for decision making and effective operations at the operational level, and discovering facts and building new knowledge for planning long-term activities at the strategic level, both by individual entities, as well as regions or the whole country.

In the National Space Program for 2019-2021 several activities are planned, as a result of which a maritime information infrastructure will be systematically developed combining different dedicated systems of the national maritime sector, including specialized equipment, information services and processes supported by it, high-quality digital research and economic resources, including satellite data and in-situ data, as well as expert resources. This infrastructure will enable comprehensive management of the Polish maritime area and solving current problems related to its operation and security. The article presents the planned streams of actions leading to this goal.

The availability of free and open data, such as from the Copernicus Sentinel fleet, together with the availability of affordable computing resources, create an opportunity for the wide adoption and use of Earth Observation (EO) data in all fields of our society. ESA’s “EO Exploitation Platforms” initiative aims at facilitating adoption with the paradigm shift from “bring the data to the user” (i.e. user downloads data locally) to “bring the user to the data” (i.e. move user exploitation to hosted environments with collocated computing and storage). This leads to a platform-based ecosystem that provides infrastructure, data, compute and software as a service. The resulting Exploitation Platform is where scientific and value adding activities are conducted, to generate targeted outputs for end-users.

The goal of the “Common Architecture” is to define and agree the technical interfaces for the future exploitation of Earth Observation data in a distributed environment. The Common Architecture will thus provide the interfaces to facilitate the federation of different EO resources into a “Network of EO Resources”. The “Common Architecture” will be defined using open interfaces that link the different resources (building blocks) so that a user can efficiently access and consume the disparate services of the “Network of EO Resources”.

The Common Architecture is very relevant to envisaged regional exploitation platforms. Implementation of the reference architecture in such a platform will enable integration into an evolving powerful interoperable ecosystem e.g Thematic Exploitation Platforms or the Copernicus DIAS’s. It would therefore enable new developments for regionally focussed platforms to build on top of existing capabilities, avoiding duplication of effort and focussing only on the additional regional needs.

Telespazio VEGA UK (a Leonardo and Thales company) will lead the definition of the Common Architecture through an open process of public discussion and consensus building with the EO community. It will be promoted as a Reference Architecture that will be designed to meet a broad set of use cases that cover Federated Identity Management, Processing & Chaining, and Data Access and Management. Leveraging free and open source software, a reusable Reference Implementation will be developed and deployed operationally, to act as a validation of the architecture and to provide an existing solution to third-parties.

Currently, the Atlantic region lacks a crucial capacity offered by Earth Observation: Near-Real Time (NRT) provision of satellite optical imagery. From a market-based perspective, in 2015 optical data represented 84% of the commercial data market, while SAR data represented 16% . In the meantime, data fusion is becoming a prominent trend in EO applications, with data from multiple sources bringing valuable services to users.
Hence, EDISOFT and UNINOVA jointly propose to establish an Atlantic NRT Optical and SAR-based satellite services provision from the Azores, with data fusion capabilities (SAR+Optical).
EDISOFT is already providing NRT SAR-based Maritime Surveillance services to EMSA since 2007, through its Santa Maria Ground Station in the Azores. Presently, EDISOFT is acquiring and processing all spacecraft modes from Sentinel-1 and Radarsat-2, as well as delivering value added products for oil spill and vessel, feature, behaviour and change detections.
UNINOVA has been applying AI techniques on ESA projects since 2002, including novel data fusion methods which perform temporal and spatial, multi-source and heterogeneous data fusion. Applied to SAR and Optical-based Satellite data, a new range of products can be explored.
Several applications and EO services would be available through the proposed Optical and SAR data NRT availability, ranging from environmental (pollution, marine plastics) and security (regional safety and security related activities), to Fishery control and Search and Rescue services, thus contributing to an Atlantic EO platform for data collection, management and exchange.