The NCOF Partners are:
About NCOF
What is the purpose of NCOF?
The NCOF mission is to establish ocean forecasting as part of the national infrastructure, based on world-class research and development.
NCOF aims to achieve this through collaborations that align the operational forecasting capabilities of the Met Office with world-class research carried out by a number of the UK’s leading marine and oceanographic research centres.
Who are NCOF?
NCOF is a consortium comprising the Met Office and Reading University's Environmental Systems Science Centre (ESSC), Plymouth Marine Laboratory (PML), Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory (POL) and the National Oceanography Centre Southampton (NOCS). To find out more about the individual partners and their role within NCOF please follow the links.
What does NCOF do?
Ocean information is required by many different people and organisations, and for many purposes; from disaster mitigation to leisure activities, from ensuring safety at sea for marine and offshore operations to sustainable development and exploitation of the marine environment.
Ocean forecasts developed by NCOF are already used by the Royal Navy and government agencies (such as Defra, Environment Agency, Maritime and Coastguard Agency, Fisheries Laboratories) which have increasing requirements for ocean information to protect and manage the marine environment in line with EC regulations, especially in coastal waters.
NCOF will also be used to provide a focused UK contribution to European plans to develop an operational oceanography capability under the EC GMES (Global Modelling for Environment and Security) initiative to better understand and manage the ocean environment. With our global ocean modelling capability, NCOF products and services will also make a major contribution to the Global Ocean Observing System GOOS , as well as its European component EuroGOOS.
NCOF is working constantly to improve and widen the usage of ocean forecasting information by business and for the public good. If you are active in the marine environment, NCOF may be able to help your information needs. To find out more visit our Products and Services section.
Here is a presentation describing why NCOF was formed and its mission and vision.
(Last Updated: 26-07-2011)