Presence of deep-sea mining exploration zones on the North Atlantic (18°N to 76°N and 36°E to 98°W). These areas correspond to the three polymetallic sulphides exploration contracts on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, attributed to Poland, France and Russia. Each of the three contract areas is divided into 100 squares of 10km by 10km. Source polygons originated from the International Seabed Authority. The presence (value=1) of deep-sea mining was extracted in 25km * 25km gridsquares. This dataset was built to feed a basin-wide spatial conservation planning exercise, targeting the deep sea of the North Atlantic. The goal of this approach was to identify conservation priority areas for Vulnerable Marine Ecosystems (VMEs) and deep fish species, based on the distribution of species and habitats, human activities and current spatial management.

The SMOS WRF product is available in Near Real Time to support tropical cyclones (TC) forecasts. It is generated within 4 to 6 hours from sensing from the SMOS L2 swath wind speed products (SMOS L2WS NRT), in the so-called "Fix (F-deck)" format compatible with the US Navy's ATCF (Automated Tropical Cyclone Forecasting) System. The SMOS WRF "fixes" to the best-track forecasts contain : the SMOS 10-min maximum-sustained winds (in knots) and wind radii (in nautical miles) for the 34 kt (17 m/s), 50 kt (25 m/s) and 64 kt (33 m/s) winds per geographical storm quadrants, and for each SMOS pass intercepting a TC in all the active ocean basins. See the complete description the "SMOS Wind Data Service Product Description Document" ( http://www.smosstorm.org/Document-tools/SMOS-Wind-Data-Service-Documentation ).

“SMOS Level 3 daily wind speed” (SMOS L3WS) products are daily composite maps of the collected SMOS L2 swath wind products for a specific day, provided with the same grid than the Level 2 wind data (SMOS L2WS NRT) but separated into ascending and descending passes. SMOS L3WS products are available the day after from sensing and are generated in NetCDF-4 format as described in the "SMOS Wind Data Service Product Description Document" (http://www.smosstorm.org/Document-tools/SMOS-Wind-Data-Service-Documentation ).

Distribution of three categories of protected or significant areas on the North Atlantic (18°N to 76°N and 36°E to 98°W). Categories were delineated according to relative levels of protection, from the highest to the lowest: fishing closures implemented by Regional Fisheries Management Organisations (RFMOs) and marine reserves; other MPAs likely to benefit from a lower protection; and Ecologically or Biologically Significant Marine Areas (EBSAs). Source vector data originated from the RFMOs (NAFO, NEAFC and GFCM), the World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA), national MPAs databases (US: NOAA and SAFMC; Canada: Fisheries and Oceans Canada; Norway: Institute of Marine Research) and the CBD website. The relative cover or each protection category on 25km *25km gridsquares was computed. This dataset was built to feed a basin-wide spatial conservation planning exercise, targeting the deep sea of the North Atlantic. The goal of this approach was to identify conservation priority areas for Vulnerable Marine Ecosystems (VMEs) and deep fish species, based on the distribution of species and habitats, human activities and current spatial management.

This product provides a “Final” (Refined) Level-2 Sea Surface Temperature (SST) (currently identified by "v8.2" within the file name) for the Group for High Resolution Sea Surface Temperature (GHRSST) Project, which is derived from the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer 2 (AMSR2) by Remote Sensing Systems (RSS, or REMSS). AMSR2 was launched on 18 May 2012, onboard the Global Change Observation Mission - Water (GCOM-W) satellite developed by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). The GCOM-W mission aims to establish the global and long-term observation system to collect data, which is needed to understand mechanisms of climate and water cycle variations, and demonstrate its utilization. AMSR2 onboard the first generation of the GCOM-W satellite will continue Aqua/AMSR-E observations of water vapor, cloud liquid water, precipitation, SST, sea surface wind speed, sea ice concentration, snow depth, and soil moisture. AMSR2 is a remote sensing instrument for measuring weak microwave emission from the surface and the atmosphere of the Earth. The antenna of AMSR2 rotates once per 1.5 seconds and obtains data over a 1450 km swath. This conical scan mechanism enables AMSR2 to acquire a set of daytime and nighttime data with more than 99% coverage of the Earth every 2 days. The “Final” SSTs are processed when RSS receives the atmospheric model National Center for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) Final Analysis (FNL) Operational Global Analysis. The NCEP wind directions are particularly useful for retrieving more accurate SSTs and wind speeds.

Distribution of three bathymetric terrain variables (depth, slope and Bathymetric Position Index) on the North Atlantic (18°N to 76°N and 36°E to 98°W). This dataset originated from three source layers (3km * 3km resolution) computed within the work package 3 of EU ATLAS project, and based on the EMODnet Digital Bathymetry portal and the General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans (GEBCO). From these source layers, the mean depth (m), slope (degree) and BPI (no unit) were calculated for each 25km * 25km gridsquare. This dataset was built to feed a basin-wide spatial conservation planning exercise, targeting the deep sea of the North Atlantic. The goal of this approach was to identify conservation priority areas for Vulnerable Marine Ecosystems (VMEs) and deep fish species, based on the distribution of species and habitats, human activities and current spatial management.

A prerequisite for a successful development of a multi-mission wind dataset is to ensure good inter-calibration of the different extreme wind datasets to be integrated in the product. Since the operational hurricane community is working with the in-situ dropsondes as wind speed reference, which are in turn used to calibrate the NOAA Hurricane Hunter Stepped Frequency Microwave Radiometer (SFMR) wind data, MAXSS has used the latter to ensure extreme-wind inter-calibration among the following scatterometer and radiometer systems: the Advanced Scatterometers onboard the Metop series (i.e., ASCAT-A, -B, and -C), the scatterometers onboard Oceansat-2 (OSCAT) and ScatSat-1 (OSCAT-2), and onboard the HY-2 series (HSCAT-A, -B); the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer 2 onboard GCOM-W1(AMSR-2), the multi-frequency polarimetric radiometer (Windsat), and the L-band radiometers onboard the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) and the Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) missions. In summary, a two-step strategy has been followed to adjust the high and extreme wind speeds derived from the mentioned scatterometer and radiometer systems, available in the period 2009-2020. First, the C-band ASCATs have been adjusted against collocated storm-motion centric SFMR wind data. Then, both SFMR winds and ASCAT adjusted winds have been used to adjust all the other satellite wind systems. In doing so, a good inter-calibration between all the systems is ensured not only under tropical cyclone (TC) conditions, but also elsewhere. This dataset was produced in the frame of the ESA funded Marine Atmosphere eXtreme Satellite Synergy (MAXSS) project. The primary objective of the ESA Marine Atmosphere eXtreme Satellite Synergy (MAXSS) project is to provide guidance and innovative methodologies to maximize the synergetic use of available Earth Observation data (satellite, in situ) to improve understanding about the multi-scale dynamical characteristics of extreme air-sea interaction.

Distribution of unequivocal Vulnerable Marine Ecosystems (VMEs) and VME likelihood based on indicator taxa records, on the North Atlantic (18°N to 76°N and 36°E to 98°W). Several datasets, originating from public databases, literature review and data call to ATLAS partners, were gathered to compute the presence of unequivocal VME habitats in 25km * 25 km cells for the ATLAS work package 3. One layer displays the unequivocal VMEs (value=4) and the assigned high (value=3), medium (value=2) or low (value=1) likelihood of gridsquares to host VMEs, indexed on indicator taxa records from public databases with the method detailed in Morato et al (2018). The second displays the confidence associated to the VME likelihood score, indexed on data quality as detailed in Morato et al (2018) (values for unequivocal VMEs thus 100% confidence=4; high confidence=3; medium confidence=2; low confidence=1). This dataset was built to feed a basin-wide spatial conservation planning exercise, targeting the deep sea of the North Atlantic. The goal of this approach was to identify conservation priority areas for Vulnerable Marine Ecosystems (VMEs) and deep fish species, based on the distribution of species and habitats, human activities and current spatial management.