Marie Drévillon, Charly Régnier, Bruno Levier, Charles Desportes, Coralie Perruche (MERCATOR OCEAN/Production Dep./Products Quality)

Eric Greiner (CLS), Jean-Michel Lellouche, Olivier Le Galloudec (MERCATOR OCEAN/ Production Dep./R&D)

Credits for validation methodology and tools:
Eric Greiner, Mounir Benkiran, Nathalie Verbrugge, Hélène Etienne (CLS), Fabrice Hernandez, Laurence Crosnier, Nicolas Ferry, Gilles Garric, Jean-Michel Lellouche (MERCATOR OCEAN), Stéphane Law Chune (Météo-France), Julien Paul (Links), Lionel Zawadzki (AS+), Jean-Marc Molines (LGGE), Sébastien Theeten (Ifremer), Mélanie Juza (IMEDEA), the DRAKKAR and NEMO groups, the BCG group (Météo-France, CERFACS), Bruno Blanke, Nicolas Grima, Rob Scott (LPO)

Information on input data:
Christine Boone, Gaël Nicolas (CLS/ARMOR team)

This bulletin gives an estimate of the accuracy of MERCATOR OCEAN’s analyses and forecast for the season of October-November-December 2013. It also provides a summary of useful information on the context of the production for this period. Diagnostics will be displayed for the global 1/12° (PSY4), global ¼° (PSY3), the Atlantic and Mediterranean zoom at 1/12° (PSY2), and the Iberia-Biscay-Ireland (IBI) monitoring and forecasting systems currently producing daily 3D temperature, salinity and current products. Surface Chlorophyll concentrations from the BIOMER biogeochemical monitoring and forecasting system are also displayed and compared with simultaneous observations. Quality summaries for each system and for the year 2013 will be found at the end of this issue.

Dedicated to our colleague and friend, Nicolas Ferry.