Description

Marine life is controlled by the very variable conditions in the oceans; some species have certain temperature and salinity requirements, others species need plankton to feed at. OCEBIS (OCEan Biological Information Service) is a web service that aims at providing maps of potential biological drivers that provides the basis for life in the oceans and identifying potential living areas for marine species. Examples are maps of frontal zones and marine spatial connectivity maps. To deliver these maps OCEBIS uses real-time hydrography from the Copernicus Marine Service. The OCEBIS portal is based on Geoserver so that data is displayed on pretty geographical maps; the portal has drop-down menus displaying the available products generated by OCEBIS, as well as static background layers. The portal allows zooming into areas of interest and overlying different maps, and offers a basic toolbox for data exploration. The service currently applies to the European North West Shelf.

Data availability[edit]

All data produced by OCEBIS as well as the displayed graphics, are freely available to the public. No registration is necessary. Data is provided as is and without any warranty whatsoever. Currently the following biological data layers below are updated dynamically. Hourly update frequency means Copernicus Marine Service is polled at hourly basis for new raw physical/biogeochemical data sets

New data layers may be added upon user interest and requests

How the service is operational[edit]

OCEBIS is a downstream service based on Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service (CMEMS). This means that ocebis.org on an hourly basis retrieves new data from Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service and generates maps of potential biological drivers which are made available on ocebis.org. In this way, OCEBIS gives a real-time view of the ocean state from a biological point of view. Some data types like spatial connectivity maps are generated on seasonal basis. Due to storage limitations OCEBIS only provides a limited backlog of data. However, the user may download back-end software used at ocebis.org and generate any time series downloading data from Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service data archives.

Crediting OCEBIS[edit]

Usage of data and displayed graphics from OCEBIS should be acknowledged by adding "... generated with / using data from OCEBIS(ocebis.org). Data from ocebis.org was generated using E.U. Copernicus Marine Service Information” at a suitable places in the context making usage of OCEBIS data.

Copernicus Marine Service products used

The Copernicus Marine Service products used in the OCEBIS service are currently:

• NORTHWESTSHELF_ANALYSIS_FORECAST_PHYS_004_001_b
• NORTHWESTSHELF_REANALYSIS_PHY_004_009
• NORTHWESTSHELF_ANALYSIS_FORECAST_BIO_004_002_b
• NORTHWESTSHELF_REANALYSIS_BIO_004_011
• BALTICSEA_ANALYSIS_FORECAST_PHY_003_006

Integration of Copernicus Marine Service information in the OCEBIS service

OCEBIS constitutes an operational downstream service, i.e. provides continuous real-time updates of the ocean state, based upstream data from selected oceanographic data sets from the Copernicus Marine Service. At hourly basis OCEBIS automatically will download selected data sets when new data sets are posted on MFCs (Monitoring Forecasting Centers) servers of the Copernicus Marine Service service. The OCEBIS server postprocess these data downloaded from the Copernicus Marine Service and repost data maps of relevant bottom-up ecosystem drivers on the OCEBIS server, based on downloaded oceanographic data sets. Thereby Copernicus Marine Service data sets are given new value of a wider user community of marine stakeholders.

Usefulness of CMEMS information[edit]

OCEBIS utilizes data posted by Copernicus Marine Service at maximum spatial and temporal resolution. The accessible spatial and temporal resolution is sufficient for many biological purposes, but in some cases higher resolution may be needed. One such case is very close to the coast line; many numerical hydrodynamical models apply a pixellated coast line, where the coast line is represented by small zonal and meridional segments. Further small scale hydrodynamic processes are truncated by the numerical scale close to the coast line. Therefore particular attention is needed when using data within the numerical scale of the coast line or close to the model domain boundary, where artificial boundary effects may come in play. Vertically data on OCEBIS also rely on the underlying numerical topography of hydrodynamic models applied, as inferred from the raw data sets retrieved from Copernicus Marine Service. Data from the Copernicus Marine Service is easily retrieved to OCEBIS by automated python scripts (based on motu-client) and data quality was well-documented and accessible. Retrieved data is in COARDS compliant format and same processing procedures can be applied across data sets, without format conversion.

Credits[edit]

Data provides by the OCEBIS service has been generated using E.U. Copernicus Marine Service Information; development of the OCEBIS service infrastructure has kindly been supported under Copernicus User Uptake programme.

Access OCEBIS web service