Paroles d'utilisateurs

Coastal Environment

Half of the world's population lives within 100 km of the coasts! Tourism, coastal development, port industries, prevention of pollution and unforeseeable climatic disasters, aquaculture, etc.

These are just some of the many activities where there is an increasing demand for precise, real time information about sea conditions. Coastal models can now respond to this demand. These models, which describe and forecast small-scale coastal phenomena (from a kilometre down to around one hundred metres), require large-scale (ie: oceanic basin, global) operational models such as Mercator to provide their initial and boundary conditions. Mercator thus aids several coastal modelling teams, not only for the French members of the public interest group (CNRS, Ifremer, IRD, Shom) but also elsewhere in Europe (Spain, Portugal, Denmark, Ireland) and even one American university.

Use case

Conditions to the limits

>>> Mercator ocean has provided to the laboratory of the Midi-Pyrénées Observatory (LA et  LEGOS), conditions to the limits for a radioelements drift model called « SIROCCO » (Realistic Simulation of the Coastal Ocean) on the Japan Pacific coast. The IAAE (International Agency of the Atomic Energy) needed this model further to the first radioactive pollution at sea from Fukushima. See SIROCCO webpage on the Japan situation

>>> Mercator Ocean has participated to the development of a coastal model for the SHOM (Hydrographic Service of the French Navy).

>>> Mercator Ocean has provided with data to the Coastal Operational Oceanography centre PREVIMER (Brest) managed by IFREMER.

>>> Mercator Ocean global and regional models have contributed to many coastal models development (Iberic peninsula, Irish Sea, Persian Gulf, Chili coasts, Gulf of Mexico...) .