Marine Observational Systems as an Integral Part of Operational Oceanology: A Review

The paper presents an overview of the current marine observational systems which provide primary information for operational monitoring and predicting the variability of the main hydrophysical fields on the scales from several tens to several thousand kilometers (of the order of the Rossby baroclinic deformation radius and higher). Such systems provide the regular implementation of oceanographic and marine meteorological observations, their rapid interpretation and delivery to users; this is a subject of a relatively new discipline, operational oceanology. The active development of this discipline during the recent two decades suggests that the forecasting of the marine environment state will eventually reach the same level of accuracy and reliability as in operational meteorology, a more successful and older discipline.