EMSO-ERIC

The EMSO ERIC is a distributed research infrastructure, consisting of 14 ocean observation systems and test sites located in the Atlantic Ocean, the Mediterranean, and the Black Sea which constantly measure different biogeochemical and physical parameters. The overarching goal of EMSO is to explore, monitor, and better understand the phenomena happening within and below the oceans and their critical impact on the Earth, providing valuable data and services to a large and diverse group of users for addressing global challenges.

EMSO-ERIC is one of the new blue data infrastructures federated in Blue-Cloud 2026, making its data available via the Data Discovery & Access Service.

This is particularly relevant to the development of the Essential Ocean Variables Workbenches for Physics and Ecosystem-level EOVs.

Types and number of data sets

Currently, the datasets available on ERDDAP are mainly time series obtained from fixed stations. The data from these time series can be collected in real-time or in “delayed mode”. Therefore, many of these datasets are constantly being updated. Through ERDDAP filters, users can create subsets of the datasets for a specific time and parameter. The EMSO ERIC federated ERDDAP service currently exposes over 190 entries.

Discovery and Access Mechanism

EMSO has set up a federated central ERDDAP service, harvesting from local ERDDAP instances for its Observation sites. From ERDDAP it is possible to access data from all institutions and observations, facilitating broad and unified access.

Data Access Policy

All data distributed by EMSO ERIC is Open, but the specific policy depends on the regional facilities. By default is used CC-BY (Creative Commons Attribution license) which permits and encourages unrestricted use and distribution of the data.

Function in Blue-Cloud

EMSO ERIC is one of the blue data infrastructures, federated in the Blue-Cloud DD&AS. The EMSO ERDDAP output contains several additional attributes which might be used to expand the Blue-Cloud metadata set. Moreover the output already is anticipating the semantic interoperability requirements that are part of the planned optimisation of the Blue-Cloud DD&AS.