The course can be taken as a whole, or attendees can select modules according to two streams: ​Marine Data Governance; or Practical MEDIN. Some modules are common to both streams, for example, modules on marine data management principles and components.

How data management relates to organisational management, data management planning, and data sharing and publishing, are included in the Governance stream, whereas detailed instruction on using the MEDIN metadata standard and guidelines ​to improve access to and reusability of data are included in the Practical MEDIN stream.

The course features interactive training and discussion sessions, quizzes, and assignments to help users become familiar with: 

• Why data management is important and how it can and arguably should be part of an organisations business management framework alongside quality, occupational health and safety, and information security.
• The role of a data policy and management plan, and how data can be shared, published and re-used. 
• Data management principles, standards and components, including data lifecycle and quality, the role of vocabularies (or data dictionaries) and the importance of creating, maintaining and publishing metadata. 
• The resources and other benefits of MEDIN and practical instruction in the use of the MEDIN data guidelines, metadata standard and controlled vocabularies.   
• How data management ‘best practice’ can improve organisational efficiency in data acquisition, analysis, curation and sharing. It covers data use with respect to corporate risk, re-use, audit and traceability, whilst at the same time helping minimising costs. 

The course will equip attendees to better meet the challenge of keeping on top of the ever-increasing volumes and types of data that are being created and how to manage this data and make it available to users as meaningful information.

Scotland's Marine Assessment 2020

Back in 2008, Scotland published a report on the state of the seas around Scotland.  This was followed, in 2011, by Scotland’s Marine Atlas: Information for the National Marine Plan.  On 21 December 2020, Scotland launched the ‘third instalment’ – Scotland’s Marine Assessment 2020 (SMA2020).  Although SMA2020 is based around assessing progress in delivering the vision of clean, healthy, productive and biologically diverse seas in a similar way to the Atlas, that is probably where the similarities end.  SMA2020 is presented on its own portal (Figure 2) with the only hard copy component being the Headlines and Next Steps which is a summary of the key findings.

Figure 3: The Scottish Marine Regions (SMRs) and Offshore Marine Regions (OMRs)

Key: S1, Forth and Tay; S2, North East; S3, Moray Firth; S4 Orkney Islands, S5, Shetland Isles; S6, North Coast; S7, West Highlands; S8, Outer Hebrides; S9, Argyll; S10, Clyde; S11, Solway. O1, Long Forties, O2, Fladen and Moray Firth Offshore; O3, East Shetland Shelf; O4, North and West Shetland Shelf; O5, Faroe-Shetland Channel; O6, North Scotland Shelf; Hebrides Shelf; O8, Bailey; O9, Rockall; O10, Hatton.

Amongst the headline messages are:

• Progress is being made in improving the state of Scotland’s seas especially in relation to contaminants. Eutrophication is not an issue in Scotland’s seas. There are mixed pictures for marine mammals, birds, fish and marine litter and there are signs of change in plankton. There are increasing pressures associated with non-indigenous species, climate change and ocean acidification, while the ability to draw conclusions about benthic habitats and underwater noise is limited by current knowledge

• Climate change is the most critical factor affecting Scotland’s marine environment. Impacts are already being seen across the Scottish marine ecosystem.

A primary reason for producing SMA2020 was to provide the evidence base for a review of Scotland’s National Marine Plan later in 2021.  The ‘Next steps’ outline that future work on Scotland’s National Marine Plan will take an ecosystem-based approach to the protection of Scotland’s seas in the management of human activities.

Throughout SMA2020, relevance of the assessments to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) has been highlighted while new ‘hexagon symbols’ (Figure 4) have been introduced to illustrate the ecosystem services that are obtained from Scotland’s Seas.

Figure 4: Examples of the ‘hexagon symbols’ introduced in SMA2020 to highlight the ecosystem services from Scotland’s seas including A. coastal protection and B. the production of oxygen.

SMA2020 has been subjected to rigorous internal and external peer review processes with a report from the external peer reviewers presented on the Portal.

There is no doubt that the ocean is changing as a result of human activities.  SMA2020 is a contribution to the evidence base that clearly illustrates what changes are occurring and where this happening.  However, it also shows that where action has been taken improvements are observed.

Promotion worked well with 478 views of the site during the event suggesting there’s lots of interest in environmental data sources and the quizzes are a good way to raise awareness of data archives. One of our water bottle winners said – "it’s always nice to find out new ways for finding data". However, out of those views we had 72 participants, mainly from early career academic backgrounds. This indicated the style of the quiz was maybe a little off putting to the general public. Given we set out to target academics and data users this time, we are happy with the uptake and will consider a different approach to make future quizzes more appealing to a wider audience. After the first 24 hours we realised not everyone participating was submitting final results. We quickly clarified that if the answer was too difficult to find, tell us in the feedback and carry on. All participants then continued to submit their feedback. In total we received 66 results.

If you missed out this time, not to worry there will be more trails in 2021 with opportunities to win a NERC water bottle or £100. Keep an eye on our website or opt in for an email alert when a quiz goes live here.

International experts in collaboration have therefore recently defined a new vocabulary describing 11 groups of phytoplankton functional types and the newly defined names and definitions are now available from the British Oceanography Data Centre (BODC). This can be found here. The next step will be to harmonise already existing metadata (information about the data), and improve the data flow from collection using the flow cytometry technology, to archival storage and ‘open’ sharing links into for example European infrastructures such as SeaDataNet and EMODnet Biology, and internationally such as OBIS.

*Timely given the UK will host the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) later this year. For further information on COP26 see LINK

 ** Flow Cytometry Technology (FCM) measures the optical properties of single cells (particles) in alignment as they cross a light source excitation. Fluorescence and light scattering intensities per cell are then recorded to determine the abundance of functional types, in this case, marine phytoplankton. For further reading and background see HERE.

With full support from the MSCC Co-Chairs (Marine Scotland Chief Scientific Advisor and Defra Deputy Director) as well as a unanimous backing at the last MSCC plenary in September (where committee members in attendance included Defra Chief Scientific Advisor, high level policy makers from across UK government and leaders of various UK marine institutes), the MSCC has released this Statement. Led by Dr Tarquin Dorrington (Head of Ocean Climate and International Science at Defra), the MSCC have now publicised this Statement to highlight the importance of the ocean in a changing climate. The Statement draws out a number of important points, such as:
 
Climate impacts

• Mean sea level rise of 12-16 cm since 1900 and predictions sea level rise will accelerate over the next eighty years
• Shift in marine species distributions and degradation of marine ecosystems due to warming and a change in ocean chemistry
• Increase risk of damage to homes and infrastructure
• Negative impacts of individual and societal health and wellbeing

• Funding state of the art ships, sensors, drones and satellites, all of which play a role in understanding the range and scale of climate change
• Research of natural and social sciences, from polar seas to tropical waters
• Lead and participate in marine international initiatives
• Having a key role in international initiatives to monitor the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) – a important driver of climate in North-West Europe

• The UK is co-hosting COP26 and hosting the G7 Presidency in 2021, it is also the start of the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development – all these require continued evidence for policy and action
• Understanding key challenges and emerging issues surrounding climate change
• Researching societal impacts of climate change in the future
• Continued work on climate projections, ocean acidification and climate mitigation and adaptation measures

Can you take on the Climate Data Challenge?

Further information on the Climate Data Challenge can be found on GitHub. This will be updated over the coming weeks with additional information.  If you are interested in the outputs from the Climate Data Challenge but are unable to take part, please email us at cop26@metoffice.gov.uk so that we can keep you informed.

All are welcome at this event. The Met Office recognises that Great Minds Don’t Think Alike and is committed to working towards being a more diverse and inclusive organisation. We see diversity as a positive and value visible and invisible individual differences.