MERCATOR OCEAN JOURNA: 
SEPTEMBER 2021 
1. SATELLITE AND IN-SITU OBSERVATIONS 
USED BY THE COPERNICUS MARINE 
SERVICE 
As a Copernicus service, the Copernicus Marine Service 
makes an extensive use of satellite data from the 
Zopernicus satellite component, through the European 
Space Agency (ESA) and the European organisation for the 
exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT). 
During the first phase of the service, all Sentinel satellites 
carrying an instrument able to observe the ocean have 
been integrated as soon as data were made available by 
space agencies (see Figure 1). In addition, all contributing 
missions made available to Copernicus services thanks to 
international agreements, by the European Commission 
and member states, have been used to complement the 
Sentinels improving spatial and temporal coverage. 
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In situ data are of paramount importance for the Copernicus 
Marine Service because they provide information about the 
ocean interior which cannot be observed from space. In 
situ observations also can locally sample high-frequency 
and high-resolution ocean processes, in particular in 
zo0astal zones, that are essential for model and satellite 
validation activities. This is why a dedicated centre, the In 
Situ Thematic Assembly Center (INS-TAC), gathers 
>bservation data from in situ networks (e.g., the Globa 
Icean Observing System (G00S), and the European Global 
Jcean Observing System (EuroG00S)). Then, the INS-TAC 
distributes high-level quality-controlled datasets in near 
real-time (NRT) and reprocessed (REP) mode to Copernicus 
Marine Service production centres and down-stream 
Users. Nowadays, the INS-TAC is one of the major 
aggregators of in-situ observation at global level (see 
Figure 2). It has a structure developed coherently and with 
a strong synergy with other components of the pan 
European data management landscape such as EMODnet 
and as SeaDataNet. 
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igure zZ: In-Situ TAC Dashboard