MITHO logo

About MITHO

Improving knowledge of threats to our ocean

A healthy ocean regulates the Earth’s climate and mitigates climate change by absorbing heat and the human-induced CO2 emissions. It serves also also as significant service provider supporting marine ecosystems’ integrity and resilience, and providing resources eg: fish and seafood to support blue economy activities and cultural and recreational services. Maintaining a healthy ocean is thus key for a sustainable life on earth Earth and is a major target of the 14th United Nations SDG “Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development”.

With the rising of atmospheric CO2 concentration, ocean’s health is at risk. The ocean is warming, acidifying and losing its oxygen content (ocean deoxygenation) and an intensified hydrological cycle is expected to increase the intensity and frequency of extreme weather events and the altered ocean-atmosphere heat exchange is expected to affect the wind patterns.

SDG goal 14 - life below water

Objectives

MiTHo activities will capitalize on the recent developments within the ESA Ocean Science Cluster and EU projects together to:


Provide a set of cumulative multi-hazard geospatial Products

Develop EO-based O2 detection methods

Monitor and advancing the process understanding of the impact of multistressors events on key ecosystem services

Provide the novel EO Experimental Products in support of societal applications

Goals

MiTHo activities will capitalize on the recent developments within the ESA Ocean Science Cluster and EU projects together to:

...and provide a multi-year atlas, based on the availability of recently developed EO-based stressors (Marine Heat Waves, Ocean Acidification, Wind Surge, River input) products, together with both available modelled and in-situ O2 data

... through Machine Learning techniques, to successfully reconstruct dissolved O2 vertical profiles and provide insights into the spatio-temporal evolution of extreme deoxygenation events - from the triggering forcing events (e.g., river inputs, eutrophication) up to the biogeochemical response

...covering diverse trophic levels, biogeochemical provinces, including disclosing the contribution of climate change and climatic modes to their prevalence

... by examining its performance in predicting corresponding biological and/or economic impacts in specific blue economy sectors, aquaculture and fisheries and on coastal protection

Working together to further our understanding

The project aims to develop innovative EO-based multistressor cumulative hazard indexes, by exploiting the latest EO-based products achieved within the ESA Ocean Science cluster projects – CAREHeat, BOOMs, BiCOME, OceanSODA, MAXSS, Sargassum, SOON, EO4SiBS, PHYSIOGLOB – combining multi-mission independent EO-based datasets, for the detection of extreme events in warming, ocean pH, winds and river inputs, and up to in-situ (BGCArgo) and modelled O2 data for hypoxia an ocean deoxygenation detection.

Download the Introductory presentation about the project
ESA Ocean Science Cluster logo and main ESA logo
CAREHeat - deteCtion and threAts of maRinE Heat waves OceanSODA - Satellite Oceanographic Datasets for Acidification SOON
BOOMS - Biodiversity in the Open Ocean, Mapping, Monitoring and Modelling MAXSS - Marine Atmosphere eXtreme Satellite Synergy PHYSIOGLOB - Assessing the inter-annual physiological response of phytoplankton to global warming using long-term satellite observations
BiCOME - Biodiversity of the Coastal Ocean: Monitoring with Earth Observation Sargassum EO4SIBS - Earth Observation data For Science and Innovation in the Black Sea