She et al. 
Operational Oceanography and Earth System Science 
Frontiers In Earth Science | www.frontlersln.org 
11 
February 2020 | Volume 8 | Article 7 
simulations do not artificially drift whereas data assimilation 
can always compensate shortcomings in operational mode. 
The development of operational oceanography in the last two 
decades, by integrating field monitoring, research (knowledge 
generation), operation and service, has demonstrated successfully 
the value chain of ocean research. In the Baltic Sea region, the 
future research is moving to an Earth system scale and be more 
responsive, the operational and adaptive level of the services 
for marine, climate, environment, and fishery are evolving. The 
value chain practiced by the operational oceanography is similar 
to other areas, e.g., Earth system research and environment 
protection. Seamless monitoring, modeling, and service provides 
a unified platform for integrating the research and services. 
Next generation operational service system needs capacities 
on reconstructing, forecasting and projecting the states of 
marine ecosystems in basin and coastal waters. Significant new 
knowledge is needed for understanding and forecasting ocean 
processes such as inter-basin and sub-basin transport, sub- 
mesoscale eddies, coast-estuary interaction, sediment transport, 
algae bloom, oxygen depletion, and marine litter transportation. 
An idea solution is to carry out monitoring-modeling integrated 
and targeted research programs in the Baltic Sea scale (She et ak, 
2016). Joint force from BOOS and Baltic Earth community is 
a great advantage for responsive and collaborative research on 
the development of seamless service capacities, from synoptic 
to climate scales, from open sea to local waters, from physical 
to biological subsystems. During the procedure, scientific issues 
e.g., Baltic Earth GCs and interactions and coupling between 
different subsystems, will be addressed. Well-designed research 
programs should cover not only dedicated field experiment and 
new knowledge generation but also knowledge transfer into 
seamless operational model system and product service. 
Naturally BOOS and Baltic Earth will consider to engage 
other important Baltic networks such as HELCOM, ICOS, and 
ICES in their cooperation as Baltic Earth and BOOS already 
collaborate with them. Within EN CLIME Baltic Earth and 
HELCOM are working together to produce a climate fact sheet 
and HELCOM and ICES representatives are members of the 
Baltic Earth Advisory Board. In the upcoming EuroSea project, 
BOOS and HELCOM partners will work together on improving 
fast delivery of HELCOM data to BOOS and a delivery of a better 
reanalysis to HELCOM by BOOS to assimilating HELCOM data. 
HELCOM is also an important stakeholder for both BOOS 
and Baltic Earth communities. Many projects carried out by 
BOOS and Baltic Earth partners, such as Baltic Sea Check Point, 
CLAIM, ECOSUPPORT, address HELCOM goals. HELCOM 
monitoring is an important source of biogeochemical and 
biological (lower trophic level) observations for both research 
and operational services. Carbon observations from ICOS and 
biological observations collected by ICES are important to 
BOOS future priority on operational ecology and Baltic Earth 
System studies. 
Recommendations 
BOOS and Baltic Earth communities share similar basic research 
instruments, i.e., monitoring and modeling. Their human 
resources are also overlapping to a certain degree: most of BOOS 
partners are also Baltic Earth partners. Collaboration between 
BOOS and Baltic Earth can help in understanding the climate 
change influence on the Baltic Sea region in many aspects. 
For example, adaptation of well-calibrated, high resolution 
operational models (both local and basin scales) to climate 
scales can help to reach the last mile to the end users in 
climate applications. High resolution BOOS observations, e.g., 
from moorings, ferrybox and shallow water Argo profilers, can 
benefit for Baltic Earth system process studies, especially for 
extreme events e.g., salty water inflow, storm surge, marine heat 
wave, oxygen depletion and algae bloom. The CMEMS ocean 
reanalysis, with an operational update to months, can provide 
comprehensive data for most recent changes of climate signals 
especially statistics of extreme events, although trend analysis 
from the reanalysis products are problematic because the number 
of observations changes with time. 
Hence, under the background of WMO seamless prediction 
of Earth systems, GOOS and EuroGOOS focus on provision 
of information not only for operational services but also for 
climate change and ocean health and for the UN Decade of Ocean 
Science, the two communities are motivated to have joint forces 
in the following two areas: 
1. Harmonization and integration of existing research 
and infrastructure: 
- Between synoptic and climate scales: 
o Harmonizing model calibration and validation 
methods for operational and climate scales: Most 
of the operational models running by BOOS partners 
have regular calibration and validation. In BAL MFC, 
such procedure has been standardized based on a 
continuous effort since 2004 for developing Copernicus 
Marine Service. This includes models both for near real 
time forecast and long-term reanalysis. Also the Baltic 
Earth community has organized several multi-model 
inter-comparisons and validation studies, mainly for 
climate scales. The most recent Baltic Earth project 
is BMIP. The two task forces should harmonize the 
efforts and aim to reach a more general, standardized 
calibration and validation procedure for both operational 
and climate models. 
o Adapting calibrated operational models for climate 
study: Although many institutes still use different models 
for operational forecast and climate study, there is a 
trend that more and more models are developed for both 
forecast and climate modeling. However, there still exist 
technical challenges when using an operational model 
for climate purpose. Some adaptations of the operational 
models to climate modeling are still needed. 
o Extending the operational forecast range from synoptic 
to climate scales (seasonal and decadal predictions): The 
Baltic Sea is dominated by many slow processes such as 
seasonal stratification and sea ice, saltwater inflows, water 
stagnation, and ventilation. Hence, the predictability of 
seasonal to decadal variability should be investigated in 
an Earth system framework and forecasting capability