The ocean is key in the global C cycle, taking up ca. 25% of the CO2 we emit, slowing climate change and giving us more time to mitigate and adapt to climate change. The Ocean C Value Chain (VC) of observations, data QC & analysis delivers key information around this to decision makers such as the Conference of the Parties. The RIs play a pivotal role in the VC via their ability to operate at scale & pool resources to ensure common data standards and operational practices. The urgency of the climate crisis drives us to put this VC on a much more robust footing with the World Meteorological Organisation leading the planning of a Global Greenhouse Gas Watch (G3W) covering all components of the Earth System. Unfortunately the VC currently delivers estimates of Ocean C uptake much larger than those from models, leading to a damaged ability to manage climate change. However further work suggests that observations at a much higher density in the Southern Ocean (SO) would substantially resolve this issue. Our ability to deliver these via ships is limited by the small number that enter the SO and we therefore need many more observations from research vessels, citizen science platforms, autonomous robotic floats & surface platforms. This step change requires substantial technological innovation and complex data synthesis. TRICUSO will address these needs by a) improving the sensing technologies on floats and small uncrewed surface vessels, b) supporting citizen science on yachts and potentially cruise and expedition vessels, c) integrating biological observations into the work flow, d) improving data flows to scientists, e) evaluating the density of observations needed & f) proposing fit for purpose governance structures that allow the RIs to operate within the G3W. These actions will enable us to have a much firmer grip of how and why Ocean Carbon uptake varies and thus a much firmer evidence base on which to make decisions around managing climate change impacts.

The overall aim of 'Source to Seas - Zero Pollution 2030 (SOS-ZEROPOL2030)' is to develop a holistic zero pollution framework which can guide the process towards achieving zero pollution in European seas by 2030. Marine contamination (including pollution) occurs as a direct result of human activities on both; land and in the marine environment; and requires urgent attention as healthy and clean seas provide numerous ecosystem services (e.g. food, oxygen production, climate regulation), which are critical for our survival and wellbeing. Given the complex and interconnected nature of marine pollution, the integration of sustainability-focused agendas and circular economy principles and practices is essential for the development of effective actions that can address its impacts. The implementation of processes and measures to reduce marine pollution will have consequences for numerous economic sectors (e.g. agriculture, fisheries, food and beverage industry, waste management, packaging industry, tourism, offshore energy) at multiple scales (local, national, regional and international), framing marine pollution as a considerable global socio-economic challenge that requires active collaboration from multiple stakeholders, across a range of geographic areas. In this context SOS-ZEROPOL2030 aims to co-design, co-produce, and co-deliver a stakeholder lead European Seas zero-pollution framework that provides practical guidance from source to sea addressing shortcomings in marine pollution management and governance. This holistic approach is based on best practice, puts emphasis on human behaviour, socioeconomics and governance; and is underpinned in knowledge about and understanding of current barriers to effective and efficient prevention, reduction, mitigation and monitoring of marine pollution in European Seas.

Blue-Cloud 2026 builds upon the pilot Blue-Cloud project which established a pilot cyber platform, providing researchers access to multi-disciplinary datasets from observations, analytical services, and computing facilities essential for blue science. Core services delivered are the federated Data Discovery & Access Service (DD&AS), the Virtual Research Environment (VRE) and Virtual Labs. Blue-Cloud 2026 aims at a further evolution of its pilot ecosystem into a Federated European Ecosystem to deliver FAIR & Open data, analytical services, instrumental for deepening research of oceans, EU seas, coastal & inland waters. It develops a thematic marine extension to EOSC for open web-based science, & serves needs of the EU Blue Economy, Marine Environment and Marine Knowledge agendas. Blue-Cloud 2026 in 42 months covers activities at a growing number of federated environmental RIs to improve & optimise services for uptake of new data sets from a multitude of data originators and for discovery and access to their structured data collections. The advanced ecosystem will provide a core data service for the Digital Twin of the Ocean, mobilising and making available major additional data resources as validated and harmonised in-situ data by means of Data Lakes. The modular architecture of the VRE is scalable & sustainable, fit for connecting additional e-infrastructures, integrating more blue analytical services, configuring more Virtual Labs, and targeting broader (groups of) users. Blue-Cloud 2026 main KERs: A) FAIR compliant DD&AS; B) Open Science VRE federating multiple e-Infrastructures; C) 3 EOV WorkBenches; D) 5 Virtual Labs; E) Blue Strategic Roadmap; F) DTO Task Force. Blue-Cloud 2026 is co-ordinated by the same organisations Trust-IT & MARIS, counting on the same core team of partners CNR, Ifremer, MOI, Seascape Belgium, VLIZ; overall it mobilises a solid, multidisciplinary, & committed team of 40 partners from 13 EU countries.

Earth and environmental sciences require a large panel and volume of data from satellite, in-situ observations, models, omics experiments... Earth system domains are interconnected and even if interfaces between domains appear of primary importance for several studies with large societal impacts, such as climate change, agriculture and food, human safety and health, the present digital architecture is based essentially on distributed and domain-dependent data repositories inducing real difficulties for integrated uses of all the environmental data. To go beyond this state-of-the-art, the overall objective of FAIR-EASE is to customize and operate distributed and integrated services for observation and modelling of the Earth system, environment and biodiversity by improving the TRL of their different components implemented in close cooperation with user-communities, the European Open Science Cloud and research infrastructures in their design and sustainable availability. The project will: (1) Improve a FAIR-EASE data discovery and data access service, relying on pre-operational existing services, in order to provide users with an easy and FAIR tool for discovery and access to environmental multidisciplinary and aggregated data-sets as managed and provided by a range of European data infrastructures; (2) Set up a FAIR-EASE Earth Analytical Lab, with EOSC connectivity supporting, through web-based interfaces, predefined processing tools and on-demand data visualization services for remote analysis and processing of heterogeneous data facilitating the cross-disciplinary collaboration, reducing the time to results and increasing productivity; and (3) Develop a number of multidisciplinary Use Cases (UCs) to contribute requirements for the FAIR-EASE system components and to validate and demonstrate the capabilities of the FAIR-EASE service for supporting open science.