Evaluation of operational ocean forecasting systems from the perspective of the users and the experts

The Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) has an Ocean Decade Implementation Plan (UNESCO-IOC, 2021) that states seven outcomes required for the ocean we want, with the fourth outcome being "A predicted ocean where society understands and can respond to changing ocean conditions." To facilitate the achievement of this goal, the IOC has endorsed Mercator Ocean International to implement the Decade Collaborative Center (DCC) for OceanPrediction (https://www.mercator-ocean.eu/oceanprediction/, last access: 21 August 2023), which is a cross-cutting structure that will work to develop global-scale collaboration between Decade Actions related to ocean prediction. To have a predicted ocean, the OceanPrediction DCC understands that is critical to co-design ocean forecasting architecture that will permit different services to deliver as one and that could take advantage of the concept of digital twinning (European Union, 2022). This architecture will be designed to overcome the present-day limitations of our systems in terms of interoperability and tools sharing. This will translate into a new scenario for ocean forecasting, where more robust systems will be easier to implement thanks to a common set of agreed tools, standards, and best practices. This new architecture will serve as inspiration for the development targets of the different decadal actions related to ocean forecasting, such as ForeSea (https://oceanpredict.org/un-decade-of-ocean-science/foresea/, last access: 21 August 2023), DITTO (https://ditto-oceandecade.org/, last access: 21 August 2023), CoastPredict (https://www.coastpredict.org/, last access: 21 August 2023), Global Environment Monitoring System for the Ocean and Coasts (GEMS Ocean (https://www.unep.org/explore-topics/oceans-seas/what-we-do/ocean-and-coastal-observations, last access: 21 August 2023)), Ocean Best Practices (https://www.oceanbestpractices.org/, last access: 21 August 2023), and others. To develop this architecture, the OceanPrediction DCC has implemented the Ocean Forecasting Co-Design Team (OFCT), which is composed of 43 international experts on all of the different aspects of the ocean forecasting value chain. The first task of this group is to analyze the present status of ocean forecasting at a global level, in order to properly identify the existing gaps before moving into the design phase. One of the first steps in this process has been to explore the degree of satisfaction of both users and experts with respect to the existing ocean forecasting systems. This has been done by launching a series of surveys among the members of the OFCT and another one among the users of the forecasting services. This paper describes the findings derived from the analysis of these surveys. Section 2 introduces the surveys, while Sect. 3 presents the results. Section 4 establishes a discussion and identifies some conclusions as part of the outlook for future exploitation.