| Summary: | print NOWESP has compiled a vast quantity of existing data from the north-west European shelf. Such a focused task is without precedence. It is now highly recommended that one, or a few national and international data centres or agencies should be chosen and properly supported by the E.U., where all available observational data, incl. the NOWESP data, are collected, stored, regularly updated by the providers of the data, and made available to the researchers. International agreement nust be reached on the quality control procedures and quality standards for data to be stored in these databases. Proper arrangements should be made to preserve the economic value of the data for their 'owners' without compromising use of the data by researchers or duplicating data collecting efforts.The continetal Shelf data needed are concentration fields of temperature, salinity, nutrients, suspended matter and chlorophyll, which can be called 'climatological' fields. For this purpose at least one monthly survey on the whole European shelf is needed at least during five years, with a proper spatial resolution, e.g. 1º by 1º, and at least in those areas where climatological data are now totally lacking. From the modelling point of view an alternative would be the availability of data from sufficiently representative fixed stations on the shelf, with weekly sampling for several years.It should be realized that there are hardly any data available on the shelf boundaries. Therefore, one should consider a European effort to set up a limited network of stations, especially at the shelf edge, where a limited, slected set of parameters is measured on a long-term basis (time series) for use in modelling and for interpreting long-term natural changes in the marine environment and changes due to human interference (eutrophication, pollutants, climatic changes, biodiversity changes).The E.U. could foster coordination of nationally organized measuring campaigns in Europe.Methodologies should be promoted to collect aral distributed data sets through remote sensing (satelite or aircraft-borne) techniques.The formulations of basic physics should be improved: turbulence must be simulated in a way that more closely represents nature. There is a need for a wel validated, detailed shelf circulation model wich represents the measured data properly during long-term simulations. Tides must always be included since the are important for mixing. A detailed North Atlantic ocean cirulation model should be developed to provide proper boundary conditions at the shelf edge.The physics of exchanges at the shelf edges, between the ocean models and the shelf models should be studied and better formulated. status: published
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