The core business of the partnership is marine analysis and prediction through the integration of models and observations

The development of derived products and services is aimed at key external stakeholders in the Government, NGO, Commercial, Academic & General Public sectors.

The sphere of influence of Ocean Prediction is the marine environment from the coast to the deep ocean, including physics (dynamics, waves, turbulence), biogeochemistry, ecosystems (lower and links to higher trophic levels) and sediments (coastal and benthic, including the benthos). The natural geographic foci for the partnership are global and European waters, but partnership activities may occur in other areas as stakeholder needs dictate.

Ocean Prediction is connected, but not central, to activities relating to other components of the earth system (atmosphere, land surface, land ice) for example under the UK Environmental Prediction or UK Earth System Modelling projects. The partnership advises on the marine contribution to these systems, and analysis of outputs of these that specifically relate to the marine environment may fall under our remit (e.g. marine data-products from coupled systems).

Strong links between our activities and stakeholders focusing on Ecosystem Function and Ecosystem Services (e.g. those involved with Fisheries and MSFD) are crucial, however, there are other groups covering these (e.g. OSPAR, ICES and MSCC Evidence Groups) and we avoid duplication with these.

The synthesis of observations and models (for example through assimilation) is key to marine analysis and prediction but the partnership itself does not engage in observation collection or processing.