A description of existing Operational Ocean Forecasting Services around the Globe

Abstract. Predicting the ocean state in support of human activities, environmental monitoring and policymaking across different regions worldwide is fundamental and require numerical strategies that have to address their physical peculiarities. The Authors provide an outlook on the status of operational ocean forecasting systems in 8 key regions in the world ocean: the West Pacific and Marginal Seas of South and East Asia, the Indian Ocean, the African Seas, the Mediterranean and Black Sea, the North-East Atlantic, the South and Central America Seas, the North America and the Arctic. Starting from the specific regional challenges to address, the Authors discuss on the numerical strategy and available operational systems, pointing out the straightness and the ways forward to improve the essential ocean variables predictability from regional to coastal scales, products reliability and accuracy. This compendium is a baseline to understand the worldwide offer, showing how the heterogeneity of the physical characteristics of ocean dynamics can be addressed thanks to a systematic and regular provisioning of predictions.