Our mission: To establish ocean forecasting as part of the national infrastructure, based on world-class research and development.

Information about the ocean is required by a variety of organisations - including the Maritime and Coastguard Agency and Royal Navy - for a variety of purposes, from ensuring safety at sea to planning marine and offshore operations, sustainable development and exploitation of the marine environment.

Making ocean forecast information readily available is vital to ensure the needs of all organisations are met. Over the last decade the Met Office has developed and implemented a number of ocean forecasting systems in collaboration with the Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory (POL) and Plymouth Marine Laboratory (PML).

NCOF builds on existing collaborations which bring together the operational expertise of the Met Office with the world-class research carried out by a number of the UK's leading marine and oceanographic research centres. NCOF is a strategic partnership between the Met Office, POL, PML, the NERC Environmental Systems Science Centre (ESSC) and National Oceanography Centre, Southampton (NOCS).

The National Centre for Ocean Forecasting (NCOF) will:

• Deliver ocean forecasts based on the latest research to users across government, commerce and research.
• 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.
• Work closely - under GMES Marine Environment and Security for the European Area (MERSEA) - with the French Mercator consortium to advance the goal of operational ocean forecasting in Europe.
• Make a major contribution to the Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS) and its European component EuroGOOS.

Read more about our ocean forecasting capabilities

NCOF web site