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Research projects
Our main ongoing research projects are :
The objective is to build a “digital avatar” of socio-ecosystems in the southwest Indian Ocean. It consists of modular scientific tools used to generate and analyze the trajectories of systems in different contexts of climate, economic, and societal change, existing spatial management modes and tools, and possible futures associated with different management scenarios for the systems studied.
The MEDIATION project targets two crucial questions : how do global ocean changes impact the functioning of regional marine ecosystems, and how can we effectively assess the effect of potential adaptation and environmental preservation measures ? The answer may lie in the creation of a digital ocean twin that is robust and effective enough for study and forecasting.
- POSYDONIE (CNES, 2024-2026) - Ocean Projections : SYnergies DONnées - sImulations Ensemblistes :
The POSYDONIE project aims to leverage the potential of space oceanography for the methodological developments planned in MEDIATION and for their application to various exercises projecting the state of marine ecosystems in two regions of the Mediterranean.
- SNOOPI (INSU - MITI CNRS, 2025-2027) :
National Observation Services – towards Parsimonious Performance Optimization through Intelligent Inversions and Advanced Numerical Simulations.
Among previous projects, some of the most notable were :
The objective of this project is to strengthen the capacity of the Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service (CMEMS) to provide indicators of the state of marine ecosystems by improving data assimilation methods in marine biogeochemistry models.
Project funded by the Make Our Planet Great Again program. Principal investigators : W.K. Dewar (Florida State University) and MEOM scientists. Collaborations in LOPS (Brest) and LMD (Paris).
This project aims to prepare numerical ocean models for the next generation Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service (CMEMS). In response to the future priorities for CMEMS, IMMERSE will develop new capabilities to enable the production of ocean forecasts and analyses that exploit upcoming high resolution satellite datasets ; deliver ocean analyses and forecasts with the higher spatial resolution and additional process complexity demanded by users ; exploit the opportunities of new high performance computing (HPC) technology ; allow easy interfacing of CMEMS products with detailed local coastal models. These developments will be delivered in the NEMO ocean model, an established, world-class ocean modelling system that already forms the basis of the majority of CMEMS analysis and forecast products.
Turbulent ocean models spontaneously generate a chaotic variability reaching multidecadal/basin scales. How this low-frequency chaos impacts climate-relevant oceanic indices is an important unsettled question. To separate this chaos from the atmospherically-forced response, MEOM and CERFACS have performed a pioneering 50-member ensemble of 1/4° global ocean/sea-ice simulations (1960-2015), which were perturbed initially but driven by the same atmospheric evolution. The results reveal the importance of the oceanic chaos, its large spatiotemporal scales, its its modulation by the atmosphere, and raise new issues about the detection/attribution of climate change in the ocean and the potential impact of this low-frequency chaos on the atmosphere.
DRAKKAR is a scientific and technical coordination between French research teams (LEGI-Grenoble, LPO-Brest, LOCEAN-Paris), MERCATOR-ocean, NOC Southampton, IFM-Geomar Kiel, and other teams in Europe and Canada. We propose to design, carry out, assess, and distribute high-resolution global ocean/sea-ice numerical simulations based on the NEMO platform (www.nemo-ocean.eu) performed over long periods (five decades or more), and to improve and maintain a hierarchy of state-of-the-art ocean/sea-ice model configurations for operational and research applications.
The vision of AtlantOS is to improve and innovate Atlantic observing by using the Framework of Ocean Observing to obtain an international, more sustainable, more efficient, more integrated, and fit-for-purpose system. Hence, the AtlantOS initiative will have a long-lasting and sustainable contribution to the societal, economic and scientific benefit arising from this integrated approach. This will be achieved by improving the value for money, extent, completeness, quality and ease of access to Atlantic Ocean data required by industries, product supplying agencies, scientist and citizens.