Marine monitoring to help protect lives at sea

In order to save lives at sea, the National Oceanography Centre (NOC) is joining six research organisations to provide a world-class marine monitoring and forecasting service, which could be used to improve marine rescue operations.


This consortium, led by the Met Office, has won a European Union funded contract to provide data on; currents, temperature, salinity, sea level and biogeochemistry. Together the consortium will provide the European North West Shelf (NWS) service by bringing together their experience in operational oceanography, scientific excellence and service delivery expertise. This will build on five years of developmental work.



Dr Jason Holt, the NOC science lead on the project, and co-chair of the National Partnership for Ocean Predication, said “We are really pleased to be part of this service, which will enable the NOC’s world-leading research on predicting the shelf sea environment to have direct social and economic benefits”.



The other partners in the NWS service are; Plymouth Marine Laboratory, Institute of Marine Research, Norway, the Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency of Germany and ENVITA. The NWS service is contracted by Mercator Ocean and the data they provide will be available free of charge at http://marine.copernicus.eu.