This special issue introduces a new editorial line with a common newsletter between the Mercator Ocean Forecasting Center in Toulouse and the Coriolis Infrastructure in Brest. Some papers are dedicated to observations only, when others display collaborations between the 2 aspects: Observations and Modelling/Data assimilation. The idea is to wider and complete the subjects treated in our newsletter, as well as to trigger interactions between observations and modelling communities.

Over the past 10 years, Mercator Ocean and Coriolis have been working together both at French, European and international level for the development of global ocean monitoring and forecasting capabilities. For the first time, this Newsletter is  jointly coordinated by Mercator Ocean and Coriolis teams. The first goal is to foster interactions between the french Mercator Ocean Modelling/Data Asssimilation and Coriolis Observations communities, and to a larger extent, enhance communication at european and international levels. The second objective is to broaden the themes of the scientific papers to Operational Oceanography in general, hence reaching a wider audience within both Modelling/Data Asssimilation and Observations groups.Once a year in April, Mercator Ocean and Coriolis will publish a common newsletter merging the Mercator Ocean Newsletter on the one side and the Coriolis one on the other side. Mercator Ocean will still publish 3 other issues per year of its Newsletter in July, October and January each year, more focused on Ocean Modeling and Data Assimilation aspects. The present issue will be posted simultaneously on Mercator Ocean and Coriolis websites. We will meet again next year in April 2011 for a new jointly coordinated Newsletter between Mercator Ocean and Coriolis.

• What new services will be provided by MyOcean By Sylvie Pouliquen, Pierre Bahurel
• Euro-Argo : Towards a sustained european contribution to ARGO By Pierre Yves Le Traon, Yves Desaubies, Emina Mamaca, Sylvie Pouliquen, Hartmut Heinrich, Birgit Klein, Olaf Boebel, Jurgen Fischer, Detlef Quadfasel, John Gould, Brian King, Fiona Grant, Isabel Ambar, Maria Chatzinaki, Gerasimos Korres, Kjell Arne Mork, Laurent Kerleguer, Pierre Marie Poulain, Andreas Sterl, Jon Turton, Pedro Velez, Waldemar Walczowski, Elisaveta Peneva, Emil Stanev
• CORIOLIS : A one-stop shopping to ocean data collected from the JCOMM networks By Loic Petit de la Villeon, Thierry Carval, Sylvie Pouliquen
• CORA (CORIOLIS Ocean Database for re-Analyses), a new comprehensive and qualified ocean in-situ datasetfrom 1900 to 2008 and its use in GLORYS By Cécile Cabanes, Clément de Boyer Montégut, Christine Coatanoan, Nicolas Ferry, Cécile Pertuisot, Karina Von Schuckmann, Loic Petit de la Villeon, Thierry Carval, Sylvie Pouliquen and Pierre-Yves Le Traon
• Global Ocean indicators By Karina von Schuckmann, Marie Drévillon, Nicolas Ferry, Sandrine Mulet, Marie Hélène Rio
• ANDRO : An ARGO-based deep displacement atlas By Michel Ollitrault, Jean-Philippe Rannou
• Bi-directionnal satellite communications on new profiling floats By Serge Le Reste, Xavier André, Bertrand Moreau