More recently it was the Management Unit of the North Sea Mathematical Models which contacted the GHER. This federal institution is responsible for daily surveillance of the North Sea. It works on the basis of dynamic models which use biological laws and the laws of physics. One of their applications is calculating the evolution of algae in the North Sea. Yet the presence of suspended matter, as it absorbs the available light, strongly influences the dynamic of algae and phytoplankton. It was Damien Sirjacobs, when he was a researcher at the GHER (he now works in the Department of Life Sciences / Algolgy, mycology and experimental systematic), who applied the DINEOF method more specifically to the case of suspended matter in the North Sea (1). To do so he used data recorded between 2003 and 2006 by two satellites: the MERIS spectrometer installed on the European Space Agency’s (ESA) ENVISAT satellite and the MODIS radio-spectrometer on board NASA’s AQUA satellite.

‘One field of application for the DINEOF methodology which will still be much made use of is the study of the evolution of local structures,’ concludes our oceanologist. ‘In effect we talk of a global warming of the planet, but we know very little about how climate change acts at the level of local structures. And yet their existence and their movements are easier to detect than an average global warming which is, as we know, very small in relations to daily or seasonal variations.’