<p>In the framework of the Mediterranean Operational Network for the Global Ocean O... more <p>In the framework of the Mediterranean Operational Network for the Global Ocean Observing System (MONGOOS), an oil spill modeling team supported the Regional Marine Pollution Emergency Response Centre for the Mediterranean Sea (REMPEC) to simulate the transport of hydrocarbons at sea and to assess the potential impact to neighbouring countries during an oil pollution incident reported in the second half of February 2021. The oil pollution incident constituted a large amount of tar balls, which were landed on the beaches of Israel, Lebanon and Gaza Strip following an offshore oil spill.</p><p>Two oil spill models were simultaneously run: MEDSLIK and MEDSLIK-II (Zodiatis et al., 2021). MEDSLIK was forced by the 6-hour Cyprus Coastal Ocean Forecasting and Observing System (CYCOFOS) currents and sea surface temperature with a horizontal resolution of 2 km, the hourly SKIRON’s winds and waves at a horizontal resolution of 5 km. MEDSLIK-II used the 6-hour wind datasets provided by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) at ~12.5 km horizontal resolution, and the oceanographic fields (currents and SST) produced by the Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service (CMEMS) at a horizontal resolution of ~4 km. The Stokes drift was parameterized by JONSWAP.</p><p>Interestingly, the spill was not detected at early stages of its development. Therefore, the model results were compared with the coastline distribution of the accumulated oil represented by Israeli authority as a map of "Coastal Traffic Light". The map showed that the length of the affected coast was approximately 160 km with three distinct clusters located: (1) just south of Haifa; (2) near Nahariyya in the north of Israel; and (3) near Bat Yam in the south of Tel Aviv.</p><p>Preliminary MEDSLIK and MEDSLIK-II results showed reasonable level of consistency indicating the cluster between Haifa and Atlit. However, the other two clusters remained to be unpredicted by both models, despite the fact that the models predicted lower level of concentration on the coast of these two areas. Moreover, instead of the oil beaching onto the Lebanese coast, MEDSLIK-II predicted trapping the slick by the Shikmona gyre.</p><p>Although further usage of the updated satellite-derived polygons as the initial conditions allowed both models to improve their performances, the drift of tar balls in the coastal area and the map of "Coastal Traffic Light" could not to be represented with high precision.</p><p>Evidence from an investigation by the Israeli Environmental Protection Ministry has shown that the reason for observational and modeling problems could be related to the uncertainties in the early stage of the slick development. As the spilled oil aged, the formation of tar balls complicated both the satellite-derived detection and modeling the spill.</p><p>Reference</p><p>Zodiatis, G., Lardner, R., Spanoudaki, K., Sofianos, S., Radhakrishnan, H., Coppini, G., Liubartseva, S., Kampanis, N., Krokos, G., Hoteit, I., Tintore, J., Eremina, T., Drago, A., 2021. Operational oil spill modelling assessments. In “Marine hydrocarbon sill assessments. From baseline information through to decision support tools”. Edited by Makarynskyy O. pp. 145–194. ELSEVIER ISBN: 978-0-12-819354-9 https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-819354-9.00010-7 </p>
The Mediterranean Monitoring and Forecast Center of the Copernicus Marine Service (Med-MFC) provi... more The Mediterranean Monitoring and Forecast Center of the Copernicus Marine Service (Med-MFC) provides operational, regular and systematic reference information for the blue (Physics -Med-PHY- and Wave -Med-WAV) and green (Biogeochemistry -Med-BGC) state of the Mediterranean Sea. Based on state of the art modelling developments, the Med-MFC delivers Near Real Time (NRT) analysis and short-term (10 days) forecast and consistent Multi-Year (MY) Reanalysis reconstructions and their Interim extensions from 1987 (Med-PHY), 1993 (med-WAV) and 1999 (Med-BGC) till month minus one.This work aims at providing a detailed description and a quality assessment of recent modelling upgrades which have been implemented in the latest operational systems since November 2022.In particular, the major modelling advancements for each system are the following:Med-PHY NRT system: improvements in both the hydrodynamic model with a better tidal representation and data assimilation components including a new Mea...
The Mediterranean Forecasting Systems produces operational analyses, reanalyses and 10-day foreca... more The Mediterranean Forecasting Systems produces operational analyses, reanalyses and 10-day forecasts for many Essential Ocean Variables (EOVs), from currents, temperature to wind waves and pelagic biogeochemistry. The products are available at a horizontal resolution of 1/24 degrees (approximately 4 km) and 141 unevenly spaced vertical levels. The core of the Mediterranean Forecasting System is constituted by the physical (PHY), the biogeochemical (BIO) and the wave (WAV) components coupled offline, consisting of both numerical models and data assimilation modules. The 3 components together constitute the so-called Mediterranean Monitoring and Forecasting Center (Med-MFC) of the Copernicus Marine Service. Daily 10-day forecasts are produced by the PHY, BIO and WAV components as well as analyses, while reanalyses are produced for the past 30 years about every ~3 years and extended (yearly). The modelling systems, their coupling strategy and evolution is illustrated in detail. For the first time, the quality of the products is documented in terms of skill metrics evaluated on a common three-year period (2018-2020), giving the first complete assessment of uncertainties for all the Mediterranean environmental variable analyses.
The Mediterranean Monitoring and Forecasting Center (Med-MFC) is part of the Copernicus Marine En... more The Mediterranean Monitoring and Forecasting Center (Med-MFC) is part of the Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service (CMEMS) and operationally produces analysis, forecast and reanalysis products for the Mediterranean Sea hydrodynamics, waves and biogeochemistry. The modelling systems are based on state-of-the-art community models, assimilate observational in situ and satellite observations and are forced by high resolution atmospheric fields. Improvements and functioning of the Med-MFC systems are based on the full consistency among the three components which are jointly upgraded and include a continuous amelioration of the accuracy of the products. The focus of this work is to present the Med-MFC modelling systems and the available products, their skill assessment, main recent achievements and future upgrades.
HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), May 3, 2021
Copernicus Marine Service (CMEMS) includes the Black Sea Monitoring and Forecasting Center (BS-MF... more Copernicus Marine Service (CMEMS) includes the Black Sea Monitoring and Forecasting Center (BS-MFC) for the provisioning of high-quality forecast products and past reconstruction of the ocean state in the Black Sea. The BS-MFC is implemented by an international consortium since 2016, led by IO-BAS (Bulgaria) and including CMCC (Italy), ULiege (Belgium), HZ Hereon (Germany), USOF (Bulgaria), NIHWM (Romania), together with expertise from University of Bologna (Italy), ITU (Turkey) and DEU (Turkey). For each Production Unit-Physics, Biogeochemistry and Waves-an operational service and scientific evolution plans have been implemented. Every day, BS-MFC delivers analysis and 10-days forecast products for essential variables, including biogeochemistry and waves, at the spatial resolution of about 3 km. NRT
Invasive alien species threaten biodiversity and ecosystem structure and functioning, but incompl... more Invasive alien species threaten biodiversity and ecosystem structure and functioning, but incomplete assessments of their origins and temporal trends impair our ability to understand the relative importance of different factors driving invasion success. Continuous time-series are needed to assess invasion dynamics, but such data are usually difficult to obtain, especially in the case of small-sized taxa that may remain undetected for several decades. In this study, we show how micropaleontologic analysis of sedimentary cores coupled with radiometric dating can be used to date the first arrival and to reconstruct temporal trends of foraminiferal species, focusing on the alien Amphistegina lobifera and its cryptogenic congener A. lessonii in the Maltese Islands. Our results show that the two species had reached the Central Mediterranean Sea several decades earlier than reported in the literature, with considerable implications for all previous hypotheses of their spreading patterns an...
The Mediterranean Forecasting System, physical reanalysis component, is a hydrodynamic model, sup... more The Mediterranean Forecasting System, physical reanalysis component, is a hydrodynamic model, supplied by the Nucleous for European Modelling of the Ocean (NEMO), with a variational data assimilation scheme (OceanVAR) for temperature and salinity vertical profiles and satellite Sea Level Anomaly along track data. The model horizontal grid resolution is 1/24˚ (ca. 4-5 km) and the unevenly spaced vertical levels are 141.
The CMEMS Mediterranean Sea Analysis and Forecast system comprises a coupled wave-current system ... more The CMEMS Mediterranean Sea Analysis and Forecast system comprises a coupled wave-current system composed by an Ocean General Circulation Model based on NEMO v3.6 and a Wave Model based on WW3 v3.14 with a variational data assimilation scheme (OceanVar) for temperature and salinity vertical profiles and satellite SLA along track data. The model includes tides and has a 1/24˚uniform horizontal grid resolution and 141 unevenly spaced vertical levels. This dataset refers to the Med-MFC Physical EAS6 system.
The CMEMS Black Sea Analysis and Forecast physical system is based NEMO v4.0 ocean circulation mo... more The CMEMS Black Sea Analysis and Forecast physical system is based NEMO v4.0 ocean circulation model, online coupled with a variational data assimilation scheme called OceanVar, able to assimilate temperature and salinity vertical profiles, satellite SLA along track data and satellite SST data from CMEMS associated TACs. The model has a 1/40˚ regular horizontal grid resolution and 121 unevenly spaced vertical levels. It implements open boundary conditions at the Marmara Sea box for the optimal interface with the Mediterranean Sea by using high resolution model solutions provided by the Unstructured Turkish Strait System.
The document summarizes the tasks developed by the Climate and Coast Protection challenge as part... more The document summarizes the tasks developed by the Climate and Coast Protection challenge as part of the MedSea Checkpoint Project. The report describes the methods developed for generating each targeted product requested by the contract tender. It specifies the main characteristics of the datasets, the main gaps in them and the problems associated with their use.
The CMEMS Mediterranean Sea Physics Analysis and Forecast system comprises an Ocean General Circu... more The CMEMS Mediterranean Sea Physics Analysis and Forecast system comprises an Ocean General Circulation Model based on NEMO v3.6 and a variational data assimilation scheme (OceanVar) for temperature and salinity vertical profiles and satellite SLA along track data. The model has a 1/24˚uniform horizontal grid resolution and 141 unevenly spaced vertical levels. It spans the time period 2015-2017 and it is daily updated.
This report includes useful information for establishing an operational chain of forecast fields ... more This report includes useful information for establishing an operational chain of forecast fields to feed the tool for eco-routes of the GUTTA project. It is based on the data feed available at the data center of CMCC and focuses on meteo-oceanographic variables relevant to ferry boat navigation.
This work describes the design, implementation and validation of the Black Sea physics analysis a... more This work describes the design, implementation and validation of the Black Sea physics analysis and forecasting system, developed by the Black Sea Physics production unit within the Black Sea Monitoring and Forecasting Center as part of the Copernicus Marine Environment and Monitoring Service. The system provides analyses and forecasts of the temperature, salinity, sea surface height, mixed layer depth and currents for the whole Black Sea basin, excluding the Azov Sea, and has been operational since 2016. The system is composed of the NEMO (v 3.4) numerical model and an OceanVar scheme, which brings together real time observations (in-situ temperature and salinity profiles, sea level anomaly and sea surface temperature satellite data). An operational quality assessment framework is used to evaluate the accuracy of the products which set the basic standards for the future upgrades, highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of the model and the observing system in the Black Sea.
Innovative web-based decision support system, called WITOL (Where Is The Oil http://www.witoil.co... more Innovative web-based decision support system, called WITOL (Where Is The Oil http://www.witoil.com), has been developed to maintain emergency management in case of oil spill accidents. WITOIL embraces (1) Lagrangian oil spill model MEDSLIK-II (De Dominicis et al., 2013 http://medslikii.bo.ingv.it) coupled with the basin-scale and regional operational oceanographic services; (2) two-modular block of oil spill forecast and uncertainty evaluation; (3) user visualization tool including web and mobile interface with visualization of geospatial information by means of Google Maps.
<p>In the framework of the Mediterranean Operational Network for the Global Ocean O... more <p>In the framework of the Mediterranean Operational Network for the Global Ocean Observing System (MONGOOS), an oil spill modeling team supported the Regional Marine Pollution Emergency Response Centre for the Mediterranean Sea (REMPEC) to simulate the transport of hydrocarbons at sea and to assess the potential impact to neighbouring countries during an oil pollution incident reported in the second half of February 2021. The oil pollution incident constituted a large amount of tar balls, which were landed on the beaches of Israel, Lebanon and Gaza Strip following an offshore oil spill.</p><p>Two oil spill models were simultaneously run: MEDSLIK and MEDSLIK-II (Zodiatis et al., 2021). MEDSLIK was forced by the 6-hour Cyprus Coastal Ocean Forecasting and Observing System (CYCOFOS) currents and sea surface temperature with a horizontal resolution of 2 km, the hourly SKIRON’s winds and waves at a horizontal resolution of 5 km. MEDSLIK-II used the 6-hour wind datasets provided by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) at ~12.5 km horizontal resolution, and the oceanographic fields (currents and SST) produced by the Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service (CMEMS) at a horizontal resolution of ~4 km. The Stokes drift was parameterized by JONSWAP.</p><p>Interestingly, the spill was not detected at early stages of its development. Therefore, the model results were compared with the coastline distribution of the accumulated oil represented by Israeli authority as a map of "Coastal Traffic Light". The map showed that the length of the affected coast was approximately 160 km with three distinct clusters located: (1) just south of Haifa; (2) near Nahariyya in the north of Israel; and (3) near Bat Yam in the south of Tel Aviv.</p><p>Preliminary MEDSLIK and MEDSLIK-II results showed reasonable level of consistency indicating the cluster between Haifa and Atlit. However, the other two clusters remained to be unpredicted by both models, despite the fact that the models predicted lower level of concentration on the coast of these two areas. Moreover, instead of the oil beaching onto the Lebanese coast, MEDSLIK-II predicted trapping the slick by the Shikmona gyre.</p><p>Although further usage of the updated satellite-derived polygons as the initial conditions allowed both models to improve their performances, the drift of tar balls in the coastal area and the map of "Coastal Traffic Light" could not to be represented with high precision.</p><p>Evidence from an investigation by the Israeli Environmental Protection Ministry has shown that the reason for observational and modeling problems could be related to the uncertainties in the early stage of the slick development. As the spilled oil aged, the formation of tar balls complicated both the satellite-derived detection and modeling the spill.</p><p>Reference</p><p>Zodiatis, G., Lardner, R., Spanoudaki, K., Sofianos, S., Radhakrishnan, H., Coppini, G., Liubartseva, S., Kampanis, N., Krokos, G., Hoteit, I., Tintore, J., Eremina, T., Drago, A., 2021. Operational oil spill modelling assessments. In “Marine hydrocarbon sill assessments. From baseline information through to decision support tools”. Edited by Makarynskyy O. pp. 145–194. ELSEVIER ISBN: 978-0-12-819354-9 https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-819354-9.00010-7 </p>
The Mediterranean Monitoring and Forecast Center of the Copernicus Marine Service (Med-MFC) provi... more The Mediterranean Monitoring and Forecast Center of the Copernicus Marine Service (Med-MFC) provides operational, regular and systematic reference information for the blue (Physics -Med-PHY- and Wave -Med-WAV) and green (Biogeochemistry -Med-BGC) state of the Mediterranean Sea. Based on state of the art modelling developments, the Med-MFC delivers Near Real Time (NRT) analysis and short-term (10 days) forecast and consistent Multi-Year (MY) Reanalysis reconstructions and their Interim extensions from 1987 (Med-PHY), 1993 (med-WAV) and 1999 (Med-BGC) till month minus one.This work aims at providing a detailed description and a quality assessment of recent modelling upgrades which have been implemented in the latest operational systems since November 2022.In particular, the major modelling advancements for each system are the following:Med-PHY NRT system: improvements in both the hydrodynamic model with a better tidal representation and data assimilation components including a new Mea...
The Mediterranean Forecasting Systems produces operational analyses, reanalyses and 10-day foreca... more The Mediterranean Forecasting Systems produces operational analyses, reanalyses and 10-day forecasts for many Essential Ocean Variables (EOVs), from currents, temperature to wind waves and pelagic biogeochemistry. The products are available at a horizontal resolution of 1/24 degrees (approximately 4 km) and 141 unevenly spaced vertical levels. The core of the Mediterranean Forecasting System is constituted by the physical (PHY), the biogeochemical (BIO) and the wave (WAV) components coupled offline, consisting of both numerical models and data assimilation modules. The 3 components together constitute the so-called Mediterranean Monitoring and Forecasting Center (Med-MFC) of the Copernicus Marine Service. Daily 10-day forecasts are produced by the PHY, BIO and WAV components as well as analyses, while reanalyses are produced for the past 30 years about every ~3 years and extended (yearly). The modelling systems, their coupling strategy and evolution is illustrated in detail. For the first time, the quality of the products is documented in terms of skill metrics evaluated on a common three-year period (2018-2020), giving the first complete assessment of uncertainties for all the Mediterranean environmental variable analyses.
The Mediterranean Monitoring and Forecasting Center (Med-MFC) is part of the Copernicus Marine En... more The Mediterranean Monitoring and Forecasting Center (Med-MFC) is part of the Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service (CMEMS) and operationally produces analysis, forecast and reanalysis products for the Mediterranean Sea hydrodynamics, waves and biogeochemistry. The modelling systems are based on state-of-the-art community models, assimilate observational in situ and satellite observations and are forced by high resolution atmospheric fields. Improvements and functioning of the Med-MFC systems are based on the full consistency among the three components which are jointly upgraded and include a continuous amelioration of the accuracy of the products. The focus of this work is to present the Med-MFC modelling systems and the available products, their skill assessment, main recent achievements and future upgrades.
HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), May 3, 2021
Copernicus Marine Service (CMEMS) includes the Black Sea Monitoring and Forecasting Center (BS-MF... more Copernicus Marine Service (CMEMS) includes the Black Sea Monitoring and Forecasting Center (BS-MFC) for the provisioning of high-quality forecast products and past reconstruction of the ocean state in the Black Sea. The BS-MFC is implemented by an international consortium since 2016, led by IO-BAS (Bulgaria) and including CMCC (Italy), ULiege (Belgium), HZ Hereon (Germany), USOF (Bulgaria), NIHWM (Romania), together with expertise from University of Bologna (Italy), ITU (Turkey) and DEU (Turkey). For each Production Unit-Physics, Biogeochemistry and Waves-an operational service and scientific evolution plans have been implemented. Every day, BS-MFC delivers analysis and 10-days forecast products for essential variables, including biogeochemistry and waves, at the spatial resolution of about 3 km. NRT
Invasive alien species threaten biodiversity and ecosystem structure and functioning, but incompl... more Invasive alien species threaten biodiversity and ecosystem structure and functioning, but incomplete assessments of their origins and temporal trends impair our ability to understand the relative importance of different factors driving invasion success. Continuous time-series are needed to assess invasion dynamics, but such data are usually difficult to obtain, especially in the case of small-sized taxa that may remain undetected for several decades. In this study, we show how micropaleontologic analysis of sedimentary cores coupled with radiometric dating can be used to date the first arrival and to reconstruct temporal trends of foraminiferal species, focusing on the alien Amphistegina lobifera and its cryptogenic congener A. lessonii in the Maltese Islands. Our results show that the two species had reached the Central Mediterranean Sea several decades earlier than reported in the literature, with considerable implications for all previous hypotheses of their spreading patterns an...
The Mediterranean Forecasting System, physical reanalysis component, is a hydrodynamic model, sup... more The Mediterranean Forecasting System, physical reanalysis component, is a hydrodynamic model, supplied by the Nucleous for European Modelling of the Ocean (NEMO), with a variational data assimilation scheme (OceanVAR) for temperature and salinity vertical profiles and satellite Sea Level Anomaly along track data. The model horizontal grid resolution is 1/24˚ (ca. 4-5 km) and the unevenly spaced vertical levels are 141.
The CMEMS Mediterranean Sea Analysis and Forecast system comprises a coupled wave-current system ... more The CMEMS Mediterranean Sea Analysis and Forecast system comprises a coupled wave-current system composed by an Ocean General Circulation Model based on NEMO v3.6 and a Wave Model based on WW3 v3.14 with a variational data assimilation scheme (OceanVar) for temperature and salinity vertical profiles and satellite SLA along track data. The model includes tides and has a 1/24˚uniform horizontal grid resolution and 141 unevenly spaced vertical levels. This dataset refers to the Med-MFC Physical EAS6 system.
The CMEMS Black Sea Analysis and Forecast physical system is based NEMO v4.0 ocean circulation mo... more The CMEMS Black Sea Analysis and Forecast physical system is based NEMO v4.0 ocean circulation model, online coupled with a variational data assimilation scheme called OceanVar, able to assimilate temperature and salinity vertical profiles, satellite SLA along track data and satellite SST data from CMEMS associated TACs. The model has a 1/40˚ regular horizontal grid resolution and 121 unevenly spaced vertical levels. It implements open boundary conditions at the Marmara Sea box for the optimal interface with the Mediterranean Sea by using high resolution model solutions provided by the Unstructured Turkish Strait System.
The document summarizes the tasks developed by the Climate and Coast Protection challenge as part... more The document summarizes the tasks developed by the Climate and Coast Protection challenge as part of the MedSea Checkpoint Project. The report describes the methods developed for generating each targeted product requested by the contract tender. It specifies the main characteristics of the datasets, the main gaps in them and the problems associated with their use.
The CMEMS Mediterranean Sea Physics Analysis and Forecast system comprises an Ocean General Circu... more The CMEMS Mediterranean Sea Physics Analysis and Forecast system comprises an Ocean General Circulation Model based on NEMO v3.6 and a variational data assimilation scheme (OceanVar) for temperature and salinity vertical profiles and satellite SLA along track data. The model has a 1/24˚uniform horizontal grid resolution and 141 unevenly spaced vertical levels. It spans the time period 2015-2017 and it is daily updated.
This report includes useful information for establishing an operational chain of forecast fields ... more This report includes useful information for establishing an operational chain of forecast fields to feed the tool for eco-routes of the GUTTA project. It is based on the data feed available at the data center of CMCC and focuses on meteo-oceanographic variables relevant to ferry boat navigation.
This work describes the design, implementation and validation of the Black Sea physics analysis a... more This work describes the design, implementation and validation of the Black Sea physics analysis and forecasting system, developed by the Black Sea Physics production unit within the Black Sea Monitoring and Forecasting Center as part of the Copernicus Marine Environment and Monitoring Service. The system provides analyses and forecasts of the temperature, salinity, sea surface height, mixed layer depth and currents for the whole Black Sea basin, excluding the Azov Sea, and has been operational since 2016. The system is composed of the NEMO (v 3.4) numerical model and an OceanVar scheme, which brings together real time observations (in-situ temperature and salinity profiles, sea level anomaly and sea surface temperature satellite data). An operational quality assessment framework is used to evaluate the accuracy of the products which set the basic standards for the future upgrades, highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of the model and the observing system in the Black Sea.
Innovative web-based decision support system, called WITOL (Where Is The Oil http://www.witoil.co... more Innovative web-based decision support system, called WITOL (Where Is The Oil http://www.witoil.com), has been developed to maintain emergency management in case of oil spill accidents. WITOIL embraces (1) Lagrangian oil spill model MEDSLIK-II (De Dominicis et al., 2013 http://medslikii.bo.ingv.it) coupled with the basin-scale and regional operational oceanographic services; (2) two-modular block of oil spill forecast and uncertainty evaluation; (3) user visualization tool including web and mobile interface with visualization of geospatial information by means of Google Maps.
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