MERCATOR OCEAN JOURNA: 
SEPTEMBER 2021 
Since the beginning of Copernicus 1, a wave MY product 
was delivered. This IBI-WAV-MY product was initially based 
on a 1/10° MF-WAM non-assimilative hindcast forced 
by the ECMWF ERA-Interim. The period initially covered 
was 1993-2016 and this first system didn't include data 
assimilation nor any coupling with surface currents, and it 
was nested into the ECMWF global wave reanalysis. 
The IBI wave MY system was fully upgraded in April 2018 
and a completely new product was delivered. This new 
wave product increases the horizontal resolution by a factor 
of 2, to 1/20°, and it is based on reanalysis (a DA scheme 
for altimetric SWH observations, analogous to IBI NRT WAV). 
The atmospheric forcing was also updated and became the 
new wave reanalysis driven by the ECMWF hourly ERA5 
reanalysis. Likewise, the open boundary condition was 
updated, using wave spectra boundary conditions from 
the Copernicus Marine Service GLOBAL wave reanalysis 
solution. Furthermore, this new IBl-wave MY system has 
an off-line coupling with the IBI MY ocean circulation 
reanalysis to include impacts that surface currents have on 
the sea states. All these upgrades resulted in a significant 
enhancement of the IBI MY wave product quality. An example 
of this is shown in Figure 3, and further details can be seen 
in the Copernicus Marine Service product quality document 
of the product (San Martin et al., 2020). 
3. THE IBI-MFC SERVICE TODAY 
As shown, the IBI-MFC provides an operational service 
in constant evolution. In the last years, the number of 
datasets offered by the IBI-MFC to the Copernicus Marine 
Service catalogue has steadily grown from 3 products 
(7 datasets) in 2016 to 6 IBI products (accounting for 20 
datasets) in 2021. Thus, the current IBI service delivers 
37 variables covering the Blue and Green ocean from 
physics (temperature, salinity, currents, sea level, etc.), 
waves (significant wave height, peak period, etc.) and 
biogeochemistry (Chlorophyll, oxygen, nutrients, etc.). 
These variables currently encompass a wide range of 
temporal frequencies (i.e., 15-minute data, together with 
hourly, daily, and monthly means). 
The core of the current IBI-MFC service lies in operational 
suites that embed models in charge of producing the 
different NRT forecast, analysis and MY reanalyvsis/hindcast 
outputs. In particular, these operational suites manage: 
- the acquisition of the best upstream data available to 
force models and assimilate observations, 
- the running of models and post-processing procedures 
for generating the products, 
the validation of modelling solutions based on 
comparisons against all available observational data, 
- the timely delivery to users of the final IBl products. 
To supervise the proper operation, the IBI-MFC relies on 
several monitoring tools to check operation status, in terms 
af upstream sources availability, HPC (High-Performance 
Zomputing) & storage resources, control of different suites’ 
phases and a correct product dissemination. On top of it, 
the IBI-MFC relies on a Local Service Desk responsible for: 
“ncidents management, programmed service outages, 
updates and changes, and user relations. The rigorous 
design, control, and management of the suites and all relatec 
ıncidents ensure a highly reliable, robust and fully monitorec 
'BI-MFC service, with timeliness always higher than 94%. 
Together with the forecast, analysis, and reanalysis products 
accessible through the Copernicus Marine Service catalogue, 
the IBI-MFC also contributes to monitor the health of the 
ocean over past decades with the delivery of tailored ocean 
monitoring indicators (OMI). Several IBI OMIs have already 
been published in Copernicus Marine Service Ocean State 
Reports (0SRs): the IBI Coastal Upwelling Index (0SR#1, 
2016), the Mediterranean Outflow Water OMI (0SR#2, 2018), 
OMIis on extreme varlability of Sea Surface Temperature 
(SST) and Significant Wave Height (SWH) (0SR#3, 2019) anc 
the variability of stormy wave events index on IBI (0SR#4, 
2020). Most of these IBI OMIs issued in OSRs are delivered 
through the Copernicus Marine Service catalogue and 
»perationally updated (based on the last reanalysis products 
axtensions available). 
The availability of HPC resources is a key element to 
sustain the here-described IBI-MFC operational service 
and to ensure its future evolution. 
Finally, IBI-MFC provides a service always devoted to meet 
requirements of an ever-growing community of end-users 
(from 178 users in 2014 to more than 500 in 2020 with half 
of them operational regular users downloading IBI products 
at least twice a week). The increasing interest in using IBl- 
MFC products is reflected by the 100 TB of IBI physics, 
biogeochemistry and waves data were downloaded in 
2020 by users (mainly from academia, private companies 
and public organizations)