MERCATOR OCEAN JOURNA: 
SEPTEMBER 2021 
2. STATUS AT END OF COPERNICUS 1 
The Arctic MFC now offers twice as many products 
as initially and include waves, tides and ocean carbon 
variables. New products have up to 4 times higher resolution 
compared to 2015, both horizontally and vertically and 
adhere to Copernicus Marine Service standard naming 
conventions. Products offered at the end of Copernicus 1.0 
have improved performance, more targeted quality checks 
and easy access to important monitoring indicators, which 
make them better suited to user needs. 
3. POST-2021 PERSPECTIVES 
After having introduced a few independent products, it will 
be necessary to improve their mutual consistency. The first 
step should be to provide the physical forecast at higher 
horizontal and vertical resolution. A second step will be to 
synchronize the slow variability of the tidal model to the 
data assimilative ocean forecast model. The consistency 
Jetween waves and the ocean model can also be improved 
Jusing wave input terms into the ocean model (Ali et al. 
2019). 
Ocean forecasts also need improved bathymetry data 
around Greenland and near-real-time forecasts of river 
discharge as from the Arctic-HYPE hydrological model. The 
5cean reanalysis should assimilate sea level anomalies 
from the SWOT mission, sea surface salinities from the 
SMOS mission as prepared in the ESA Arctic+ Salinity 
project. The standalone sea ice model should also include 
the assimilation of sea ice deformations from Sentinel-1 
SAR ice drift. When available, ocean and sea ice data frorr 
the High-Priority Copernicus Missions CIMR and CRISTA| 
should be assimilated too. 
We also plan to distribute ensemble forecasts from the 
TOPAZ system, and improve their uncertainty estimates by 
matching them to ensemble predictions from the ECMWF. 
Monitoring the quality of sea ice forecasts can also be 
further enhanced (Palerme et al., 2019). 
Ocean biogeochemistry products would benefit from a 
longer (3 decades) multiyear timeseries. The ECOSMO 
model would be improved by using a more advancec 
sinking scheme developed in the SE project ZO0MBI anc 
should include a sea ice biogeochemistry model.