MERCATOR OCEAN JOURNA: 
SEPTEMBER 2021 
CMEMS PO 
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‚igure 1: CMEMS PQ Assurance Loop. Schematic view of the stages of the operational oceanography PQ assurance loop (in green), enabling 
the production of consistent PA information (exchanged through PA documents and websites) at the various stages of the product life cycle. 
and including the iteration (/collection of feedback) from the Marine Service users through the Service Desk. For the complete list of the 
5MFMS documents {internal and end-user oriented) related to the PQ process (and their acronyms) see Table * 
At this stage, relevant scientific quality assessments 
are carried out (some of it is gathered in peer reviewed 
publications) ensuring that production systems maintain state- 
of-the-art performance and are based on reliable / cutting- 
edge science. Another pillar of PQ assurance process Is 
documentation. The complete list of Copernicus Marine 
Service documents (reference, internal and end-user 
oriented) related to the PQ process is provided in Table 1. 
Reference documents describe: PQ activities coordination, 
documentation requirements, lay out existing guidelines, 
and define the strategy. Internal documentation is furnished 
by producers for management purposes. All PQ activities 
carried out by producers in the pre-operational qualification 
phase (for new systems scheduled for entry into service) 
are detailed by producers in the (CMEMS internal document) 
Scientific Qualification Plan (ScQP). The same applies for the 
product’s operational validation, procedures are detailed in 
the (CMEMS internal document) Scientific Validation Plan 
(ScVP). End user documents include the product quality 
information document (QUID) and the synthesis quality 
overview (SQ0O). mare Information in Section 3. 
During Copernicus 1, PQ activities were based on each 
producer’s expertise and conducted as per the loop shown 
in Figure 1. The different organizational elements (PCs or 
Production Centres), which produce observational products 
;the Thematic Assembly Centres; TACs) or modelled 
forecasts, analyses and reanalyses (the Monitoring and 
Forecasting Centres; MFCs), are responsible for monitoring 
che scientific quality of their products, generating the 
-equired product quality information, delivering regular 
Jpdates of a selection of metrics and issuing the requestedo 
ZMEMS PQ reference documentation. As shown in Figure 
2, producers’ PQ activities contain both the pre-operational 
Jualification phase and the operational validation. Part of 
“his PQ information, generated by MFCs and TACs, is usec 
(co generate end-user-oriented PQ documents (i.e., QUIDs). 
°Q metrics, generated by producers during the operationa 
validation, are managed by producers themselves. In 
some cases, this information is provided online via the 
producers’ internal websites. A number of metrics, agreed 
among all producers, are delivered in a homogeneous and 
standardized way, they are centrally monitored and later 
disseminated to end-users through the Copernicus Marine 
Service web portal (by means of the new PQ-Dashboard).