GCOS GOOS WCRP/OOPC IX/3 

page 13 

work to guard the importance of science as a way of advancing the societal benefits sought by 

GEO. 

6.6 CLIMAR II Conference 

Dick  Reynolds  reported  on  the  second  JCOMM  Workshop  on  Advances  in  Marine 

Climatology  (CLIMAR II).  His  presentation  is  available  on  the  meeting  website,  and  an 

extended report is in Annex VII.  

The  CLIMAR  workshops  are  focused  on  extracting  the  maximum  information  from 

historical  marine  climatology  records,  and  on  improving  the  observing  systems  for  future 

reference. Progress in many areas since the 1999  CLIMAR workshop was reported, and the 

CLIMAR II workshop made recommendations on elements of climate monitoring quality, the 

collection  of  metadata,  the  homogenization  of  observation  methods  and  analysis,  and  the 

improvement  of  data  availability.  The  proceedings  of  the  conference  will  be  published  in  a 

special  issue  of  the  International  Journal  of  Climatology,  and  CLIMAR III is  planned  to  be 

held  in  2007.  In  response  to  a  question  from  the  panel,  Reynolds  pointed  out  that  surface 

currents and waves were within the scope of CLIMAR, and would be added to the COADS 

archive, the main point of contact for this being Val Swail. 

7.  

EXPERIMENTS, PROGRAMS, AND PROJECTS 

7.1 EC/ESA Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) and MERSEA 

Mark Drinkwater gave a presentation on GMES. The presentation can be downloaded 

from the meeting website. GMES is a joint EU and ESA initiative, is a contribution to GEO, 

and is designed to establish global monitoring capacity in support of sustainable development 

and provision of policy relevant products, realizing benefits for markets and society. Satellite 

ocean monitoring is one key element of GMES, with an initial focus on fisheries and vessel 

monitoring,  maritime  traffic  and  safety,  coastal  zones  and  open  ocean  environmental 

monitoring,  and  sea  ice  and  oil  spill  monitoring.  The  tools  necessary  for  GMES  services 

include operational ocean forecasting capability, so there are logical links with MERSEA and 

GODAE. It is now in a pre operational stage and will be fully established by 2008. 

As a complement to the Earth Explorer missions described in Section 5.2, ESA is also 

planning a number of Earth Watch missions, more service  rather than research oriented. One 

of these is planned to be an  altimeter to complement Jason  after 2008. A visible to infrared 

mission is also being studied. 

Drinkwater then gave a presentation on behalf of panel member Johnny Johannessen 

on MERSEA (Marine Environment and Security in the European Area). The presentation is 

available  on  the  meeting  website.  MERSEA s  objectives  are  complementary  to  GMES,  and 

are  to  deliver  information  products  needed  by  users  concerned  with  European  marine 

environment  and  security  policies.  MERSEA  Strand 1  was  an  EU  5th  Framework  program 

and has just ended. It integrated satellite observations, in situ observations, and modeling, to 

create ocean hindcasts, nowcasts and forecasts for various user groups. The main conclusions 

and recommendations from the MERSEA Strand 1 project are summarized below according 

to  requirements  for  satellite  measurements,  in situ  measurements,  modeling  capabilities  and 

management.