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Content archived on 2024-05-14

Mediterranean forecasting system pilot project

Objective



This proposal defines the research strategy for the implementation of a Mediterranean Forecasting System which aims at the prediction of coastal primary producers variability from the time scales of days to months. Such a predictive capability is required to sustain an healthy coastal environment and its management. A forecasting system of such kind requires two essential components, an observing system and a numerical modeling/data assimilation component that can use the past observational information to optimally initialize the forecast. The technical rationale of the Project is based upon the hypothesis that both hydrodynamics and ecosystem fluctuations in the coastaVshelf areas of the Mediterranean are intimately connected to the general circulation. The second assumption is that, for the purely physical components of the ecosystem, monitoring and numerical modeling can be demonstrated to work almost pre-operationally. In fact, a major goal of the proposal is to show that Near Real Time (NRT) forecasts of the large scale basin currents are possible.
In this proposal we develop and implement:
1) a pilot automatic temperature monitoring system for the overall Mediterranean Sea (Voluntary Observing Ship-VOS system) with NRT data delivery;
2) a pilot Mediterranean Multisensor Moored Array buoy system (M3A) which could automatically monitor a complete set of physical parameters, such as temperature, salinity and currents, together with relevant biochemical and optical measurements in order to establish the feasibility of multiparametric monitoring of the upper thermocline in the whole basin; 3) NRT satellite data (sea surface height, sea surface temperature and color) pre-processing procedures in order to show that satellite data corrections of such complex remotely sensed parameters can be done in NRT with sufficient accuracy;
4) different data assimilation schemes in order to assimilate multivariate parameters, perhaps all the parameters measured during this phase, from the VOS system to the satellite sea surface height and temperature; 5) a strategy to carry out numerical ocean forecast experiments scale for 3 to 10 days in the future at the whole basin and for a total period of three months;
6) standard techniques to downscale the hydrodynamics to different shelf areas of the Mediterranean Sea;
7) methods for assimilating nutrient, chlorophyll and PAR into predictive ecosystem models;
8) ecosystem models in shelf areas of the basin in order to validate them with existing biogeochemical data sets;
9) realize an overall NRT data collection and dissemination network which should allow the timeliness release of data for the forecasting exercise.
This proposal involves directly a large number of countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea with an exchange of expertise in order to: 1) build a cost-effective basin wide monitoring system; 2) build capacity in local centers to model the shelf areas with state of the art hydrodynamic and ecosystem modeling; 3) create a network between all the nations bordering the Mediterranean Sea (also from its southern part) and other European countries which will freely share observational data and model results.
KEYWORDS: Mediterranean, forecasting, monitoring.

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Funding Scheme

CSC - Cost-sharing contracts

Coordinator

NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL OF ITALY
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Address
Via P. Gobetti 101
40129 BOLOGNA
Italy

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Participants (27)

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Last update: 12 March 1999

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Permalink: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/MAS3980171

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