Coriolis (project)

Coriolis involves 7 institutes in operational oceanography in France (CNES, CNRS, Ifremer, IPEV, IRD, Météo-France, Shom) decided in 2001 to joint their efforts within Coriolis in order to:


 * organise and maintain data acquisition in real-time and delayed mode of in-situ measurements necessary for operational oceanography.
 * Set up an operational in-situ data centre,
 * develop and improve the technology necessary for operational oceanography.

Context
Data useful for operational oceanography, are obtained by diverse means including in-situ (ships, drifters, floats, moorings, etc.) and satellites. They come in very different forms, from a single variable measured at a single point to multivariate, four-dimensional collections of data that can represent data volumes from a few bytes to gigabytes. In the 2000s, there began the emergence of assembly centres that:
 * integrate data coming from a wide variety of platforms and providers (including scientists, national data centres, satellite data centres and operational agencies),
 * get enough information from the originators to be able to know exactly how the data have been acquired and processed (documented and commonly agreed QC procedures, history of the processing),
 * and then distribute them in an agreed standard (speaking the same language).

Coriolis (project) action has permitted to build one of these Data Assembly Centers that has originally been designed to provide the French ocean forecasting centers, MERCATOR-Océan and French Hydrographic Service ( SHOM), with real-time qualified and integrated products, first for assimilation and then for validation purposes particularly in the framework of MyOcean European project. With the arrival of re-analysed products, such as CORA dataset, Coriolis is also able to serve the research community.