From 1 - 10 / 23
  • '''This product has been archived''' For operationnal and online products, please visit https://marine.copernicus.eu '''DEFINITION''' We have derived an annual eutrophication and eutrophication indicator map for the North Atlantic Ocean using satellite-derived chlorophyll concentration. Using the satellite-derived chlorophyll products distributed in the regional North Atlantic CMEMS REP Ocean Colour dataset (OC- CCI), we derived P90 and P10 daily climatologies. The time period selected for the climatology was 1998-2017. For a given pixel, P90 and P10 were defined as dynamic thresholds such as 90% of the 1998-2017 chlorophyll values for that pixel were below the P90 value, and 10% of the chlorophyll values were below the P10 value. To minimise the effect of gaps in the data in the computation of these P90 and P10 climatological values, we imposed a threshold of 25% valid data for the daily climatology. For the 20-year 1998-2017 climatology this means that, for a given pixel and day of the year, at least 5 years must contain valid data for the resulting climatological value to be considered significant. Pixels where the minimum data requirements were met were not considered in further calculations. We compared every valid daily observation over 2020 with the corresponding daily climatology on a pixel-by-pixel basis, to determine if values were above the P90 threshold, below the P10 threshold or within the [P10, P90] range. Values above the P90 threshold or below the P10 were flagged as anomalous. The number of anomalous and total valid observations were stored during this process. We then calculated the percentage of valid anomalous observations (above/below the P90/P10 thresholds) for each pixel, to create percentile anomaly maps in terms of % days per year. Finally, we derived an annual indicator map for eutrophication levels: if 25% of the valid observations for a given pixel and year were above the P90 threshold, the pixel was flagged as eutrophic. Similarly, if 25% of the observations for a given pixel were below the P10 threshold, the pixel was flagged as oligotrophic. '''CONTEXT''' Eutrophication is the process by which an excess of nutrients – mainly phosphorus and nitrogen – in a water body leads to increased growth of plant material in an aquatic body. Anthropogenic activities, such as farming, agriculture, aquaculture and industry, are the main source of nutrient input in problem areas (Jickells, 1998; Schindler, 2006; Galloway et al., 2008). Eutrophication is an issue particularly in coastal regions and areas with restricted water flow, such as lakes and rivers (Howarth and Marino, 2006; Smith, 2003). The impact of eutrophication on aquatic ecosystems is well known: nutrient availability boosts plant growth – particularly algal blooms – resulting in a decrease in water quality (Anderson et al., 2002; Howarth et al.; 2000). This can, in turn, cause death by hypoxia of aquatic organisms (Breitburg et al., 2018), ultimately driving changes in community composition (Van Meerssche et al., 2019). Eutrophication has also been linked to changes in the pH (Cai et al., 2011, Wallace et al. 2014) and depletion of inorganic carbon in the aquatic environment (Balmer and Downing, 2011). Oligotrophication is the opposite of eutrophication, where reduction in some limiting resource leads to a decrease in photosynthesis by aquatic plants, reducing the capacity of the ecosystem to sustain the higher organisms in it. Eutrophication is one of the more long-lasting water quality problems in Europe (OSPAR ICG-EUT, 2017), and is on the forefront of most European Directives on water-protection. Efforts to reduce anthropogenically-induced pollution resulted in the implementation of the Water Framework Directive (WFD) in 2000. '''CMEMS KEY FINDINGS''' Some coastal and shelf waters, especially between 30 and 400N showed active oligotrophication flags for 2020, with some scattered offshore locations within the same latitudinal belt also showing oligotrophication. Eutrophication index is positive only for a small number of coastal locations just north of 40oN, and south of 30oN. In general, the indicator map showed very few areas with active eutrophication flags for 2019 and for 2020. The Third Integrated Report on the Eutrophication Status of the OSPAR Maritime Area (OSPAR ICG-EUT, 2017) reported an improvement from 2008 to 2017 in eutrophication status across offshore and outer coastal waters of the Greater North Sea, with a decrease in the size of coastal problem areas in Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Norway and the United Kingdom. Note: The key findings will be updated annually in November, in line with OMI evolutions. '''DOI (product):''' https://doi.org/10.48670/moi-00195

  • '''DEFINITION''' The global annual chlorophyll anomaly is computed by subtracting a reference climatology (1997-2014) from the annual chlorophyll mean, on a pixel-by-pixel basis and in log10 space. Both the annual mean and the climatology are computed employing ESA Ocean Colour Climate Change Initiative (ESA OC-CCI, Sathyendranath et al., 2018a) global products (i.e. using the standard OC-CCI chlorophyll algorithms, OCI) as distributed by CMEMS. '''CONTEXT''' Phytoplankton – and chlorophyll concentration as a proxy for phytoplankton – respond rapidly to changes in their physical environment. Some of those changes are seasonal and are determined by light and nutrient availability (Racault et al., 2012). By comparing annual mean values to a climatology, we effectively remove the seasonal signal, while retaining information on potential events during the year. Chlorophyll anomalies can be correlated to climate indexes in particular regions, such as the ENSO index in the equatorial Pacific (Behrenfeld et al. 2006; Racault et al., 2012) and the IOD index in the Indian Ocean (Brewin et al., 2012). It is important to study chlorophyll anomalies in consonance with sea surface temperature and sea level anomalies, as increases in chlorophyll are generally consistent with decreases in SST and sea level anomalies, suggesting an increase in mixing and vertical nutrient transport (von Schuckmann et al., 2016). '''CMEMS KEY FINDINGS''' The average global chlorophyll anomaly 2019 is -0.02 log10(mg m-3), with a maximum value of 1.7 log10(mg m-3) and a minimum value of -3.2 log10(mg m-3). That is to say that, in average, the annual 2019 mean value is slightly lower (96%) than the 1997-2014 climatological value. The positive signals reported in 2016 and 2017 (Sathyendranath et al., 2018b) in the southern Pacific Ocean could still be observed in the 2019 map, while the significant negative anomalies in the tropical waters of the northern Pacific Ocean were also detected to a lesser extent. Areas showing a change of anomaly sign from 2019 include the southern coast of Japan (no anomaly to positive) and the tropical Atlantic (anomalies close to zero for 2019). A marked increase in chlorophyll concentration was observed during 2019 in the Great Australian Bight, while negative anomalies became stronger in the Guatemala Basin and the region south of the Gulf of Guinea and, with values of chlorophyll reaching as low as 30% of the climatological value (anomaly < -0.5 log10(mg m-3)). The persistent positive anomalies in the higher latitudes of the North Atlantic (> 40°) match the cooling observed in the 2018 and previous years SST anomaly maps.

  • '''This product has been archived'''                For operationnal and online products, please visit https://marine.copernicus.eu '''DEFINITION''' The BALTIC_OMI_TEMPSAL_sst_trend product includes the cumulative/net trend in sea surface temperature anomalies for the Baltic Sea from 1993-2021. The cumulative trend is the rate of change (°C/year) scaled by the number of years (29 years). The SST Level 4 analysis products that provide the input to the trend calculations are taken from the reprocessed product SST_BAL_SST_L4_REP_OBSERVATIONS_010_016 with a recent update to include 2021. The product has a spatial resolution of 0.02 degrees in latitude and longitude. The OMI time series runs from Jan 1, 1993 to December 31, 2021 and is constructed by calculating monthly averages from the daily level 4 SST analysis fields of the SST_BAL_SST_L4_REP_OBSERVATIONS_010_016 from 1993 to 2021. See the Copernicus Marine Service Ocean State Reports for more information on the OMI product (section 1.1 in Von Schuckmann et al., 2016; section 3 in Von Schuckmann et al., 2018). The times series of monthly anomalies have been used to calculate the trend in SST using Sen’s method with confidence intervals from the Mann-Kendall test (section 3 in Von Schuckmann et al., 2018). '''CONTEXT''' SST is an essential climate variable that is an important input for initialising numerical weather prediction models and fundamental for understanding air-sea interactions and monitoring climate change. The Baltic Sea is a region that requires special attention regarding the use of satellite SST records and the assessment of climatic variability (Høyer and She 2007; Høyer and Karagali 2016). The Baltic Sea is a semi-enclosed basin with natural variability and it is influenced by large-scale atmospheric processes and by the vicinity of land. In addition, the Baltic Sea is one of the largest brackish seas in the world. When analysing regional-scale climate variability, all these effects have to be considered, which requires dedicated regional and validated SST products. Satellite observations have previously been used to analyse the climatic SST signals in the North Sea and Baltic Sea (BACC II Author Team 2015; Lehmann et al. 2011). Recently, Høyer and Karagali (2016) demonstrated that the Baltic Sea had warmed 1-2oC from 1982 to 2012 considering all months of the year and 3-5oC when only July- September months were considered. This was corroborated in the Ocean State Reports (section 1.1 in Von Schuckmann et al., 2016; section 3 in Von Schuckmann et al., 2018). '''CMEMS KEY FINDINGS''' SST trends were calculated for the Baltic Sea area and the whole region including the North Sea, over the period January 1993 to December 2021. The average trend for the Baltic Sea domain (east of 9°E longitude) is 0.049 °C/year, which represents an average warming of 1.42 °C for the 1993-2021 period considered here. When the North Sea domain is included, the trend decreases to 0.03°C/year corresponding to an average warming of 0.87°C for the 1993-2021 period. Trends are highest for the Baltic Sea region and North Atlantic, especially offshore from Norway, compared to other regions. '''DOI (product):''' https://doi.org/10.48670/moi-00206

  • '''This product has been archived''' For operationnal and online products, please visit https://marine.copernicus.eu '''DEFINITION''' The time series are derived from the regional chlorophyll reprocessed (REP) product as distributed by CMEMS. This dataset, derived from multi-sensor (SeaStar-SeaWiFS, AQUA-MODIS, NOAA20-VIIRS, NPP-VIIRS, Envisat-MERIS and Sentinel3A-OLCI) Rrs spectra produced by CNR using an in-house processing chain, is obtained by means of the Mediterranean Ocean Colour regional algorithms: an updated version of the MedOC4 (Case 1 (off-shore) waters, Volpe et al., 2019, with new coefficients) and AD4 (Case 2 (coastal) waters, Berthon and Zibordi, 2004). The processing chain and the techniques used for algorithms merging are detailed in Colella et al. (2021). Monthly regional mean values are calculated by performing the average of 2D monthly mean (weighted by pixel area) over the region of interest. The deseasonalized time series is obtained by applying the X-11 seasonal adjustment methodology on the original time series as described in Colella et al. (2016), and then the Mann-Kendall test (Mann, 1945; Kendall, 1975) and Sens’s method (Sen, 1968) are subsequently applied to obtain the magnitude of trend. '''CONTEXT''' Phytoplankton and chlorophyll concentration as a proxy for phytoplankton respond rapidly to changes in environmental conditions, such as light, temperature, nutrients and mixing (Colella et al. 2016). The character of the response depends on the nature of the change drivers, and ranges from seasonal cycles to decadal oscillations (Basterretxea et al. 2018). Therefore, it is of critical importance to monitor chlorophyll concentration at multiple temporal and spatial scales, in order to be able to separate potential long-term climate signals from natural variability in the short term. In particular, phytoplankton in the Mediterranean Sea is known to respond to climate variability associated with the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) and El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) (Basterretxea et al. 2018, Colella et al. 2016). '''CMEMS KEY FINDINGS''' In the Mediterranean Sea, the trend average for the 1997-2020 period is slightly negative (-0.580.62% per year). Due to the change in processing techniques and chlorophyll retrieval, this trend estimate cannot be compared directly to those previously reported. The observations time series (in grey) shows minima values have been quite constant until 2015 and then there is a little decrease up to 2020, when an absolute minimum occurs with values lower than 0.04 mg m-3. Throughout the time series, maxima are variable year by year (with absolute maximum in 2015, >0.14 mg m-3), showing an evident reduction since 2016. In the last years of the series, the decrease of chlorophyll concentrations is also observed in the deseasonalized timeseries (in green) with a marked step in 2020. This attenuation of chlorophyll values in the last years results in an overall negative trend for the Mediterranean Sea. Note: The key findings will be updated annually in November, in line with OMI evolutions. '''DOI (product):''' https://doi.org/10.48670/moi-00259

  • '''This product has been archived'''                For operationnal and online products, please visit https://marine.copernicus.eu '''DEFINITION''' The ocean monitoring indicator of regional mean sea level is derived from the DUACS delayed-time (DT-2021 version) altimeter gridded maps of sea level anomalies based on a stable number of altimeters (two) in the satellite constellation. These products are distributed by the Copernicus Climate Change Service and the Copernicus Marine Service (SEALEVEL_GLO_PHY_CLIMATE_L4_MY_008_057). The mean sea level evolution estimated in the Mediterranean Sea is derived from the average of the gridded sea level maps weighted by the cosine of the latitude. The annual and semi-annual periodic signals are removed (least square fit of sinusoidal function) and the time series is low-pass filtered (175 days cut-off). The curve is corrected for the regional mean effect of the Glacial Isostatic Adjustment (GIA) using the ICE5G-VM2 GIA model (Peltier, 2004). During 1993-1998, the Global men sea level (hereafter GMSL) has been known to be affected by a TOPEX-A instrumental drift (WCRP Global Sea Level Budget Group, 2018; Legeais et al., 2020). This drift led to overestimate the trend of the GMSL during the first 6 years of the altimetry record (about 0.04 mm/y at global scale over the whole altimeter period). A correction of the drift is proposed for the Global mean sea level (Legeais et al., 2020). Whereas this TOPEX-A instrumental drift should also affect the regional mean sea level (hereafter RMSL) trend estimation, this empirical correction is currently not applied to the altimeter sea level dataset and resulting estimated for RMSL. Indeed, the pertinence of the global correction applied at regional scale has not been demonstrated yet and there is no clear consensus achieved on the way to proceed at regional scale. Additionally, the estimate of such a correction at regional scale is not obvious, especially in areas where few accurate independent measurements (e.g. in situ)- necessary for this estimation - are available. The trend uncertainty is provided in a 90% confidence interval (Prandi et al., 2021). This estimate only considers errors related to the altimeter observation system (i.e., orbit determination errors, geophysical correction errors and inter-mission bias correction errors). The presence of the interannual signal can strongly influence the trend estimation considering to the altimeter period considered (Wang et al., 2021; Cazenave et al., 2014). The uncertainty linked to this effect is not taken into account. '''CONTEXT''' The indicator on area averaged sea level is a crucial index of climate change, and individual components contribute to sea level rise, including expansion due to ocean warming and melting of glaciers and ice sheets (WCRP Global Sea Level Budget Group, 2018). According to the recent IPCC 6th assessment report, global mean sea level (GMSL) increased by 0.20 (0.15 to 0.25) m over the period 1901 to 2018 with a rate 25 of rise that has accelerated since the 1960s to 3.7 (3.2 to 4.2) mm yr-1 for the period 2006–2018. Human activity was very likely the main driver of observed GMSL rise since 1970 (IPCC WGII, 2021). The weight of the different contributions evolves with time and in the recent decades the mass change has increased, contributing to the on-going acceleration of the GMSL trend (IPCC, 2022a; Legeais et al., 2020; Horwath et al., 2022). At regional scale, sea level does not change homogenously, and RMSL rise can also be influenced by various other processes, with different spatial and temporal scales, such as local ocean dynamic, atmospheric forcing, Earth gravity and vertical land motion changes (IPCC WGI, 2021). Rising sea level can strongly affect population and infrastructures in coastal areas, increase their vulnerability and risks for food security, particularly in low lying areas and island states. Adverse impacts from floods, storms and tropical cyclones with related losses and damages have increased due to sea level rise, and increase their vulnerability and increase risks for food security, particularly in low lying areas and island states (IPCC, 2022b). Adaptation and mitigation measures such as the restoration of mangroves and coastal wetlands, reduce the risks from sea level rise (IPCC, 2022c). Beside a clear long-term trend, the regional mean sea level variation in the Mediterranean Sea shows an important interannual variability, with a high trend observed before 1999 and lower values afterward. This variability is associated with a variation of the different forcing. Steric effect has been the most important forcing before 1999 (Fenoglio-Marc, 2002; Vigo et al., 2005). Important change of the deep-water formation site also occurred in 1995. The latest is preconditioned by an important change of the sea surface circulation observed in the Ionian Sea in 1997-1998 (e.g. Gačić et al., 2011), under the influence of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) and negative Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) phases (Incarbona et al., 2016). They may also impact the sea level trend in the basin (Vigo et al., 2005). In 2010-2011, high regional mean sea level has been related to enhanced water mass exchange at Gibraltar, under the influence of wind forcing during the negative phase of NAO (Landerer and Volkov, 2013). '''CMEMS KEY FINDINGS''' Over the [1993/01/01, 2021/08/02] period, the basin-wide RMSL in the Mediterranean Sea rises at a rate of 2.7  0.83 mm/year. '''DOI (product):''' https://doi.org/10.48670/moi-00264

  • '''This product has been archived''' For operationnal and online products, please visit https://marine.copernicus.eu '''DEFINITION''' This product includes the Mediterranean Sea satellite chlorophyll trend map from 1997 to 2020 based on regional chlorophyll reprocessed (REP) product as distributed by CMEMS OC-TAC. This dataset, derived from multi-sensor (SeaStar-SeaWiFS, AQUA-MODIS, NOAA20-VIIRS, NPP-VIIRS, Envisat-MERIS and Sentinel3A-OLCI) (at 1 km resolution) Rrs spectra produced by CNR using an in-house processing chain, is obtained by means of the Mediterranean Ocean Colour regional algorithms: an updated version of the MedOC4 (Case 1 (off-shore) waters, Volpe et al., 2019, with new coefficients) and AD4 (Case 2 (coastal) waters, Berthon and Zibordi, 2004). The processing chain and the techniques used for algorithms merging are detailed in Colella et al. (2021). The trend map is obtained by applying Colella et al. (2016) methodology, where the Mann-Kendall test (Mann, 1945; Kendall, 1975) and Sens’s method (Sen, 1968) are applied on deseasonalized monthly time series, as obtained from the X-11 technique (see e. g. Pezzulli et al. 2005), to estimate, trend magnitude and its significance. The trend is expressed in % per year that represents the relative changes (i.e., percentage) corresponding to the dimensional trend [mg m-3 y-1] with respect to the reference climatology (1997-2014). Only significant trends (p < 0.05) are included. '''CONTEXT''' Phytoplankton are key actors in the carbon cycle and, as such, recognised as an Essential Climate Variable (ECV). Chlorophyll concentration - as a proxy for phytoplankton - respond rapidly to changes in environmental conditions, such as light, temperature, nutrients and mixing (Colella et al. 2016). The character of the response depends on the nature of the change drivers, and ranges from seasonal cycles to decadal oscillations (Basterretxea et al. 2018). The Mediterranean Sea is an oligotrophic basin, where chlorophyll concentration decreases following a specific gradient from West to East (Colella et al. 2016). The highest concentrations are observed in coastal areas and at the river mouths, where the anthropogenic pressure and nutrient loads impact on the eutrophication regimes (Colella et al. 2016). The the use of long-term time series of consistent, well-calibrated, climate-quality data record is crucial for detecting eutrophication. Furthermore, chlorophyll analysis also demands the use of robust statistical temporal decomposition techniques, in order to separate the long-term signal from the seasonal component of the time series. '''CMEMS KEY FINDINGS''' Chlorophyll trend in the Mediterranean Sea, for the period 1997-2020, is negative over most of the basin. Positive trend areas are visible only in the southern part of the western Mediterranean basin, in the Gulf of Lion, Rhode Gyre and partially along the Croatian coast of the Adriatic Sea. On average the trend in the Mediterranean Sea is about -0.5% per year. Nevertheless, as shown by Salgado-Hernanz et al. (2019) in their analysis (related to 1998-2014 satellite observations), there is not a clear difference between western and eastern basins of the Mediterranean Sea. In the Ligurian Sea, the trend switch to negative values, differing from the positive regime observed in the trend maps of both Colella et al. (2016) and Salgado-Hernanz et al. (2019), referred, respectively, to 1998-2009 and 1998-2014 time period, respectively. The waters offshore the Po River mouth show weak negative trend values, partially differing from the markable negative regime observed in the 1998-2009 period (Colella et al., 2016), and definitely moving from the positive trend observed by Salgado-Hernanz et al. (2019). Note: The key findings will be updated annually in November, in line with OMI evolutions. '''DOI (product):''' https://doi.org/10.48670/moi-00260

  • '''DEFINITION''' The temporal evolution of thermosteric sea level in an ocean layer (here: 0-700m) is obtained from an integration of temperature driven ocean density variations, which are subtracted from a reference climatology (here 1993-2014) to obtain the fluctuations from an average field. The regional thermosteric sea level values from 1993 to close to real time are then averaged from 60°S-60°N aiming to monitor interannual to long term global sea level variations caused by temperature driven ocean volume changes through thermal expansion as expressed in meters (m). '''CONTEXT''' The global mean sea level is reflecting changes in the Earth’s climate system in response to natural and anthropogenic forcing factors such as ocean warming, land ice mass loss and changes in water storage in continental river basins (IPCC, 2019). Thermosteric sea-level variations result from temperature related density changes in sea water associated with volume expansion and contraction (Storto et al., 2018). Global thermosteric sea level rise caused by ocean warming is known as one of the major drivers of contemporary global mean sea level rise (WCRP, 2018). '''CMEMS KEY FINDINGS''' Since the year 1993 the upper (0-700m) near-global (60°S-60°N) thermosteric sea level rises at a rate of 1.5±0.1 mm/year.

  • '''This product has been archived'''                For operationnal and online products, please visit https://marine.copernicus.eu '''DEFINITION''' The indicator of the Kuroshio extension phase variations is based on the standardized high frequency altimeter Eddy Kinetic Energy (EKE) averaged in the area 142-149°E and 32-37°N and computed from the DUACS (https://duacs.cls.fr) delayed-time (reprocessed version DT-2021, CMEMS SEALEVEL_GLO_PHY_L4_MY_008_047) and near real-time (CMEMS SEALEVEL_GLO_PHY_L4_NRT_OBSERVATIONS_008_046) altimeter sea level gridded products. The change in the reprocessed version (previously DT-2018) and the extension of the mean value of the EKE (now 27 years, previously 20 years) induce some slight changes not impacting the general variability of the Kuroshio extension (correlation coefficient of 0.988 for the total period, 0.994 for the delayed time period only). '''CONTEXT''' The long-term mean and trends alone do not give a complete view of the likely changes in position of unstable western boundary current extensions (Kelly et al., 2010). The Kuroshio Extension is an eastward-flowing current in the subtropical western North Pacific after the Kuroshio separates from the coast of Japan at 35°N, 140°E. Being the extension of a wind-driven western boundary current, the Kuroshio Extension is characterized by a strong variability and is rich in large-amplitude meanders and energetic eddies (Niiler et al., 2003; Qiu, 2003, 2002). The Kuroshio Extension region has the largest sea surface height variability on sub-annual and decadal time scales in the extratropical North Pacific Ocean (Jayne et al., 2009; Qiu and Chen, 2010, 2005). Prediction and monitoring of the path of the Kuroshio are of huge importance for local economies as the position of the Kuroshio extension strongly determines the regions where phytoplankton and hence fish are located. '''CMEMS KEY FINDINGS''' The different states of the Kuroshio extension phase have been presented and validated by Bessières et al. (2013) and further reported by Drévillon et al. (2018) in the Copernicus Ocean State Report #2. Two rather different states of the Kuroshio extension are observed: an ‘elongated state’ (also called ‘strong state’) corresponding to a narrow strong steady jet, and a ‘contracted state’ (also called ‘weak state’) in which the jet is weaker and more unsteady, spreading on a wider latitudinal band. When the Kuroshio Extension jet is in a contracted (elongated) state, the upstream Kuroshio Extension path tends to become more (less) variable and regional eddy kinetic energy level tends to be higher (lower). In between these two opposite phases, the Kuroshio extension jet has many intermediate states of transition and presents either progressively weakening or strengthening trends. In 2018, the indicator reveals an elongated state followed by a weakening neutral phase since then. '''DOI (product):''' https://doi.org/10.48670/moi-00222

  • '''This product has been archived'''                For operationnal and online products, please visit https://marine.copernicus.eu '''DEFINITION''' The BALTIC_OMI_TEMPSAL_sst_area_averaged_anomalies product includes time series of monthly mean SST anomalies over the period 1993-2021, relative to the 1993-2014 climatology, averaged for the Baltic Sea. The OMI time series runs from Jan 1, 1993 to December 31, 2021 and is constructed by calculating monthly averages from the daily level 4 SST analysis fields of the SST_BAL_SST_L4_REP_OBSERVATIONS_010_016 product from 1993 to 2021. See the Copernicus Marine Service Ocean State Reports (section 1.1 in Von Schuckmann et al., 2016; section 3 in Von Schuckmann et al., 2018) for more information on the OMI product. '''CONTEXT''' Sea Surface Temperature (SST) is an Essential Climate Variable (GCOS), that is an important input for initialis-ing numerical weather prediction models and fundamental for understanding air-sea interactions and moni-toring climate change (GCOS 2010). The Baltic Sea is a region that requires special attention regarding the use of satellite SST records and the assessment of climatic variability (Høyer and She 2007; Høyer and Karagali 2016). The Baltic Sea is a semi-enclosed basin affected bynatural variability, influenced by large-scale atmos-pheric processes and by the vicinity of land. In addition, the Baltic Sea is one of the largest brackish seas in the world. When analysing regional-scale climate variability, all these effects have to be considered, which re-quires dedicated regional and validated SST products. Satellite observations have previously been used to ana-lyse the climatic SST signals in the North Sea and Baltic Sea (BACC II Author Team 2015; Lehmann et al. 2011). Recently, Høyer and Karagali (2016) demonstrated that the Baltic Sea had warmed 1-2 oC from 1982 to 2012 considering all months of the year and 3-5 oC when only July-September months were considered. This was corroborated in the Ocean State Reports (section 1.1 in Von Schuckmann et al., 2016 and section 3 in Von Schuckmann et al., 2018). '''CMEMS KEY FINDINGS''' The basin-average trend of SST anomalies for Baltic Sea region amounts to 0.049±0.006 °C/year over the pe-riod 1993-2021 which corresponds to an average warming of 1.42°C. Adding the North Sea area, the average trend amounts to 0.03±0.003 °C/year over the same period, which corresponds to an average warming of 0.87°C for the entire region since 1993. '''DOI (product):''' https://doi.org/10.48670/moi-00205

  • '''DEFINITION''' The temporal evolution of thermosteric sea level in an ocean layer (here: 0-700m) is obtained from an integration of temperature driven ocean density variations, which are subtracted from a reference climatology (here 1993-2014) to obtain the fluctuations from an average field. The annual mean thermosteric sea level of the year 2017 is substracted from a reference climatology (1993-2014) at each grid point to obtain a global map of thermosteric sea level anomalies in the year 2017, expressed in millimeters per year (mm/yr). '''CONTEXT''' Most of the interannual variability and trends in regional sea level is caused by changes in steric sea level (Oppenheimer et al., 2019). At mid and low latitudes, the steric sea level signal is essentially due to temperature changes, i.e. the thermosteric effect (Stammer et al., 2013, Meyssignac et al., 2016). Salinity changes play only a local role. Regional trends of thermosteric sea level can be significantly larger compared to their globally averaged versions (Storto et al., 2018). Except for shallow shelf sea and high latitudes (> 60° latitude), regional thermosteric sea level variations are mostly related to ocean circulation changes, in particular in the tropics where the sea level variations and trends are the most intense over the last two decades. '''CMEMS KEY FINDINGS''' Higher-than-average thermosteric sea level is reported over most areas of the global ocean and the European regional seas in 2018. In some areas – e.g. the western boundary current regions of the Pacific and Atlantic Ocean in both hemispheres reach values of more than 0.2 m. There are two areas of lower-than-average thermosteric sea level, which stand out from the generally higher-than-average conditions: the western tropical Pacific, and the subpolar North Atlantic. The latter is linked to the so called “North Atlantic cold event” which persists since a couple of years (Dubois et al., 2018). However, its signature has significantly reduced compared to preceding years.