Core Services: An Introduction to Global Ocean Forecasting

Abstract. The capacity in monitoring and forecasting the global ocean is nowadays increased, thanks to the advancements in observing and in modelling the main physical ocean processes and dynamics. This has led to the growth of core services, devoted in providing free and open data, science-driven and based on users’ needs. Here we illustrate the fundamental steps that have been developed, along the last decades, for improving the ocean value chain – from the access to upstream data like observations to the delivery of products to users for downstream services and applications, with description of worldwide state-of-the-art operational ocean forecasting systems at global scale. It provides also some examples on core services organisation, like the Copernicus Marine Service and many others as today available and operating for the provisioning of near real time predictions.