In-Situ TAC

The mission of the In Situ Thematic Assembly Centre (In Situ TAC) is to provide integrated and harmonised products built from in situ observations from multiplatforms and made available through the Copernicus Marine catalogue. The in situ products proposed are aggregated data from various sources at measurements points (non-gridded products). In Situ TAC aggregation is made from observations acquired from data providers outside the Copernicus Marine Service to fit the needs of internal and external users.

Observations are local measurements of seawater properties. They are obtained using ad-hoc on-site sensors on board of a wide range of platforms from autonomous observatories at sea -such as drifting and fixed buoys, profiler floats (argo), tide gauges and other moorings, ferrybox, marine mammals, gliders- to research vessels and ships of opportunity that capture ocean variability at different places, times and depths.

In Situ TAC is a distributed centre composed of 7 regional centres, including a global one, well connected to the international OceanOPS and the European EuroGOOS networks. In Situ TAC also works closely with EMODnet, the physical and chemical thematic, to a better-coordinated and complementary data flow and offer.

The in situ products proposed in the Copernicus Marine catalogue are either assimilated in the Monitoring and Forecasting Centres (MFC), used to validate the MFC and the satellite Thematic Assembly Centres (TAC) or provided to Copernicus Marine Service users for research and any downstream activities.