Description: The Mediterranean community represented in this paper is the result of more than 30 years of EU and nationally funded coordination, which has led to key contributions in science concepts and operational initiatives. Together with the establishment of operational services, the community has coordinated with universities, research centers, research infrastructures and private companies to implement advanced multi-platform and integrated observing and forecasting systems that facilitate the advancement of operational services, scientific achievements and mission-oriented innovation. Thus, the community can respond to societal challenges and stakeholders needs, developing a variety of fit-for-purpose services such as the Copernicus Marine Service. The combination of state-of-the-art observations and forecasting provides new opportunities for downstream services in response to the needs of the heavily populated Mediterranean coastal areas and to climate change. The challenge over the next decade is to sustain ocean observations within the research community, to monitor the variability at small scales, e.g., the mesoscale/submesoscale, to resolve the sub-basin/seasonal and inter-annual variability in the circulation, and thus establish the decadal variability, understand and correct the model-associated biases and to enhance model-data integration and ensemble forecasting for uncertainty estimation. Better knowledge and understanding of the level of Mediterranean variability will enable a subsequent evaluation of the impacts and mitigation of the effect of human activities and climate change on the biodiversity and the ecosystem, which will support environmental assessments and decisions. Further challenges include extending the science-based added-value products into societal relevant downstream services and engaging with communities to build initiatives that will contribute to the 2030 Agenda and more specifically to SDG14 and the UN's Decade of Ocean Science for sustainable development, by this contributing to bridge the science-policy gap. The Mediterranean observing and forecasting capacity was built on the basis of community best practices in monitoring and modeling, and can serve as a basis for the development of an integrated global ocean observing system.

Description: The OceanGliders program started in 2016 to support active coordination and enhancement of global glider activity. OceanGliders contributes to the international efforts of the Global Ocean Observation System (GOOS) for Climate, Ocean Health, and Operational Services. It brings together marine scientists and engineers operating gliders around the world: (1) to observe the long-term physical, biogeochemical, and biological ocean processes and phenomena that are relevant for societal applications; and, (2) to contribute to the GOOS through real-time and delayed mode data dissemination. The OceanGliders program is distributed across national and regional observing systems and significantly contributes to integrated, multi-scale and multi-platform sampling strategies. OceanGliders shares best practices, requirements, and scientific knowledge needed for glider operations, data collection and analysis. It also monitors global glider activity and supports the dissemination of glider data through regional and global databases, in real-time and delayed modes, facilitating data access to the wider community. OceanGliders currently supports national, regional and global initiatives to maintain and expand the capabilities and application of gliders to meet key global challenges such as improved measurement of ocean boundary currents, water transformation and storm forecast.

Description: The data set consists of maps of total velocity of surface currents in the Ibiza Channel, derived from HF radar measurements.

Description: The Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service (CMEMS) Ocean State Report (OSR) provides an annual report of the state of the global ocean and European regional seas for policy and decision-makers with the additional aim of increasing general public awareness about the status of, and changes in, the marine environment. The CMEMS OSR draws on expert analysis and provides a 3-D view (through reanalysis systems), a view from above (through remote-sensing data) and a direct view of the interior (through in situ measurements) of the global ocean and the European regional seas. The report is based on the unique CMEMS monitoring capabilities of the blue (hydrography, currents), white (sea ice) and green (e.g. Chlorophyll) marine environment. This first issue of the CMEMS OSR provides guidance on Essential Variables, large-scale changes and specific events related to the physical ocean state over the period 1993–2015. Principal findings of this first CMEMS OSR show a significant increase in global and regional sea levels, thermosteric expansion, ocean heat content, sea surface temperature and Antarctic sea ice extent and conversely a decrease in Arctic sea ice extent during the 1993–2015 period. During the year 2015 exceptionally strong large-scale changes were monitored such as, for example, a strong El Niño Southern Oscillation, a high frequency of extreme storms and sea level events in specific regions in addition to areas of high sea level and harmful algae blooms. At the same time, some areas in the Arctic Ocean experienced exceptionally low sea ice extent and temperatures below average were observed in the North Atlantic Ocean.

Description: Published

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Description: 4A. Oceanografia e clima

Description: JCR Journal

Description: Author Posting. © The Author(s), 2017. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here under a nonexclusive, irrevocable, paid-up, worldwide license granted to WHOI. It is made available for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Ocean Dynamics 67 (2017): 767-782, doi:10.1007/s10236-017-1058-z.

Description: Bio-physical glider measurements from a unique process-oriented experiment in the Eastern Alboran Sea (AlborEx) allowed us to observe the distribution of the deep chlorophyll maximum (DCM) across an intense density front, with a resolution (∼ 400 m) suitable for investigating sub-mesoscale dynamics. This front, at the interface between Atlantic and Mediterranean waters, had a sharp density gradient (Δρ ∼ 1 kg/m3 in ∼ 10 km) and showed imprints of (sub-)mesoscale phenomena on tracer distributions. Specifically, the chlorophyll-a concentration within the DCM showed a disrupted pattern along isopycnal surfaces, with patches bearing a relationship to the stratification (buoyancy frequency) at depths between 30 and 60 m. In order to estimate the primary production (PP) rate within the chlorophyll patches observed at the sub-surface, we applied the Morel and Andrè (J Geophys Res 96:685–698 1991) bio-optical model using the photosynthetic active radiation (PAR) from Argo profiles collected simultaneously with glider data. The highest production was located concurrently with domed isopycnals on the fresh side of the front, suggestive that (sub-)mesoscale upwelling is carrying phytoplankton patches from less to more illuminated levels, with a contemporaneous delivering of nutrients. Integrated estimations of PP (1.3 g C m−2d−1) along the glider path are two to four times larger than the estimations obtained from satellite-based algorithms, i.e., derived from the 8-day composite fields extracted over the glider trip path. Despite the differences in spatial and temporal sampling between instruments, the differences in PP estimations are mainly due to the inability of the satellite to measure DCM patches responsible for the high production. The deepest (depth 〉 60 m) chlorophyll patches are almost unproductive and probably transported passively (subducted) from upper productive layers. Finally, the relationship between primary production and oxygen is also investigated. The logarithm of the primary production in the DCM interior (chlorophyll (Chl) 〉 0.5 mg/m3) shows a linear negative relationship with the apparent oxygen utilization, confirming that high chlorophyll patches are productive. The slope of this relationship is different for Atlantic, mixed interface waters and Mediterranean waters, suggesting the presence of differences in planktonic communities (whether physiological, population, or community level should be object of further investigation) on the different sides of the front. In addition, the ratio of optical backscatter to Chl is high within the intermediate (mixed) waters, which is suggestive of large phytoplankton cells, and lower within the core of the Atlantic and Mediterranean waters. These observations highlight the relevance of fronts in triggering primary production at DCM level and shaping the characteristic patchiness of the pelagic domain. This gains further relevance considering the inadequacy of optical satellite sensors to observe DCM concentrations at such fine scales.

Description: This work has been partly funded by the Jerico-TNA program, under the project named FRIPP (FRontal Dynamics Influencing Primary Production), and by the Italian Flagship Project RITMARE.

Description: © The Author(s), 2019. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Copernicus Publications 11(1) (2019): 129-145. doi: 10.5194/essd-11-129-2019.

Description: he AlborEX (Alboran Sea Experiment) consisted of a multi-platform, multi-disciplinary experiment carried out in the Alboran Sea (western Mediterranean Sea) between 25 and 31 May 2014. The observational component of AlborEx aimed to sample the physical and biogeochemical properties of oceanographic features present along an intense frontal zone, with a particular interest in the vertical motions in its vicinity. To this end, the mission included 1 research vessel (66 profiles), 2 underwater gliders (adding up 552 profiles), 3 profiling floats, and 25 surface drifters. Near real-time ADCP velocities were collected nightly and during the CTD sections. All of the profiling floats acquired temperature and conductivity profiles, while the Provor-bio float also measured oxygen and chlorophyll a concentrations, coloured dissolved organic matter, backscattering at 700nm, downwelling irradiance at 380, 410, and 490nm, as well as photo-synthetically active radiation (PAR). In the context of mesoscale and sub-mesoscale interactions, the AlborEX dataset constitutes a particularly valuable source of information to infer mechanisms, evaluate vertical transport, and establish relationships between the thermal and haline structures and the biogeochemical variable evolution, in a region characterised by strong horizontal gradients provoked by the confluence of Atlantic and Mediterranean waters, thanks to its multi-platform, multi-disciplinary nature. The dataset presented in this paper can be used for the validation of high-resolution numerical models or for data assimilation experiment, thanks to the various scales of processes sampled during the cruise. All the data files that make up the dataset are available in the SOCIB data catalog at https://doi.org/10.25704/z5y2-qpye (Pascual et al., 2018). The nutrient concentrations are available at https://repository.socib.es:8643/repository/entry/show?entryid=07ebf505-bd27-4ae5-aa43-c4d1c85dd500 (last access: 24 December 2018).

Description: We wish to thank the three anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments and the extensive check of the data files. AlborEx was conducted in the framework of PERSEUS EU-funded project (grant agreement no. 287600). Glider operations were partially funded by the JERICO FP7 project. Ananda Pascual acknowledges support from the Spanish National Research Program (E-MOTION/CTM2012-31014 and PRE-SWOT/CTM2016-78607-P). Simon Ruiz and Ananda Pascual are also supported by the Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service (CMEMS) MedSUB project. Antonio Olita was supported by the JERICO-TNA program, through the FRIPP (FRontal Dynamics Influencing Primary Production) project. The profiling floats and some drifters were contributed by the Argo-Italy program. The proceedings of such an ambitious mission would not have been possible without the involvement of numerous staff both at sea and on land: Ana Massanet, Margarita Palmer, Irene Lizaran, Carlos Castilla, Pau Balaguer, Milena Menna, Kristian Sebastián, Sebastián Lora, and Antonio Bussani.

Description: The Mediterranean community represented in this paper is the result of more than 30 years of EU and nationally funded coordination, which has led to key contributions in science concepts and operational initiatives. Together with the establishment of operational services, the community has coordinated with universities, research centers, research infrastructures and private companies to implement advanced multi-platform and integrated observing and forecasting systems that facilitate the advancement of operational services, scientific achievements and mission-oriented innovation. Thus, the community can respond to societal challenges and stakeholders needs, developing a variety of fit-for-purpose services such as the Copernicus Marine Service. The combination of state-of-the-art observations and forecasting provides new opportunities for downstream services in response to the needs of the heavily populated Mediterranean coastal areas and to climate change. The challenge over the next decade is to sustain ocean observations within the research community, to monitor the variability at small scales, e.g., the mesoscale/submesoscale, to resolve the sub-basin/seasonal and inter-annual variability in the circulation, and thus establish the decadal variability, understand and correct the model-associated biases and to enhance model-data integration and ensemble forecasting for uncertainty estimation. Better knowledge and understanding of the level of Mediterranean variability will enable a subsequent evaluation of the impacts and mitigation of the effect of human activities and climate change on the biodiversity and the ecosystem, which will support environmental assessments and decisions. Further challenges include extending the science-based added-value products into societal relevant downstream services and engaging with communities to build initiatives that will contribute to the 2030 Agenda and more specifically to SDG14 and the UN's Decade of Ocean Science for sustainable development, by this contributing to bridge the science-policy gap. The Mediterranean observing and forecasting capacity was built on the basis of community best practices in monitoring and modeling, and can serve as a basis for the development of an integrated global ocean observing system.

Description: Published

Description: Article 568

Description: 4A. Oceanografia e clima

Description: JCR Journal

Description: Si listano le singole sezioni in cui S.Simoncelli ha contribuito. Ogni sezione puo' essere citata separatamente dal report 1.1 Ocean temperature and salinity S. Mulet, B. Buongiorno Nardelli, S. Good, A. Pisano, E. Greiner, M. Monier E. Autret, L. Axell, F. Boberg, S. Ciliberti, M. Drévillon, R. Droghei, O. Embury, J. Gourrion, J. Høyer, M. Juza, J. Kennedy, B. Lemieux-Dudon, E. Peneva, R. Reid, S. Simoncelli, A. Storto, J. Tinker, K. von Schuckmann, S. L. Wakelin. 2.1. Ocean heat content ..K. von Schuckmann, A. Storto, S. Simoncelli, R. P. Raj, A.Samuelsen, A. de Pascual Collar, M. Garcia Sotillo, T Szerkely, M. Mayer, K. A. Peterson, H. Zuo, G. Garric, M. Monier. 3.4 Water mass formation processes in the Mediterranean Sea over the past 30 years S. Simoncelli, Nadia Pinardi, C. Fratianni, C. Dubois, G. Notarstefano. 3.5 Ventilation of the Western Mediterranean Deep Water through the Strait of Gibraltar S. Sammartino, J. García Lafuente, C. Naranjo, S. Simoncelli. 4.4 Unusual salinity pattern in the South Adriatic Sea in 2016 Z. Kokkini, G. Notarstefano P-M Poulain, E. Mauri, R. Gerin, S. Simoncelli

Description: The oceans regulate our weather and climate from global to regional scales. They absorb over 90% of accumulated heat in the climate system (IPCC 2013 IPCC. 2013. Climate change 2013: The physical science basis. Contribution of working group I to the fifth assessment report of the intergovernmental panel on climate change [Stocker TF, Qin D, Plattner G-K, Tignor M, Allen SK, Boschung J, Nauels A, Xia Y, Bex V, Midgley PM, editors]. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1535. doi: 10.1017/CBO9781107415324. [Crossref], , [Google Scholar]) and over a quarter of the anthropogenic carbon dioxide (Le Quéré et al. 2016 Le Quéré C, Andrew RM, Canadell JG, Sitch S, Korsbakken JI, Peters GP, Manning AC, Boden TA, Tans PP, Houghton RA, et al. 2016. Global carbon budget 2016. Earth Syst Sci Data. 8( 2): 605– 649. doi: 10.5194/essd-8-605-2016 [Crossref], [Web of Science ®], , [Google Scholar]). They provide nearly half of the world’s oxygen. Most of our rain and drinking water is ultimately regulated by the sea. The oceans provide food and energy and are an important source of the planet's biodiversity and ecosystem services. They are vital conduits for trade and transportation and many economic activities depend on them (OECD 2016 OECD . 2016. The ocean economy in 2030. Paris : OECD Publishing. doi: 10.1787/9789264251724-en. [Crossref], , [Google Scholar]). Our oceans are, however, under threat due to climate change and other human induced activities and it is vital to develop much better, sustainable and science-based reporting and management approaches (UN 2017 UN . 2017. Report of the United Nations conference to support the implementation of sustainable development goal 14: Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development (Advance unedited version). https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/15662FINAL_15_June_2017_RepoRe_Goal_14.pdf . [Google Scholar]). Better management of our oceans requires long-term, continuous and state-of-the art monitoring of the oceans from physics to ecosystems and global to local scales. The Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service (CMEMS) has been set up to address these challenges at European level. Mercator Ocean was tasked in 2014 by the European Union under a delegation agreement to implement the operational phase of the service from 2015 to 2021 (CMEMS 2014 CMEMS . 2014. Technical annex to the delegation agreement with Mercator Ocean for the implementation of the Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service (CMEMS). www.copernicus.eu/sites/default/files/library/CMEM_TechnicalAnnex_PUBLIC.docx.pdf . [Google Scholar]). The CMEMS now provides regular and systematic reference information on the physical state, variability and dynamics of the ocean, ice and marine ecosystems for the global ocean and the European regional seas (Figure 0.1; CMEMS 2016 CMEMS . 2016. High level service evolution strategy, a document prepared by Mercator Ocean with the support of the CMEMS STAC. [Google Scholar]). This capacity encompasses the description of the current situation (analysis), the prediction of the situation 10 days ahead (forecast), and the provision of consistent retrospective data records for recent years (reprocessing and reanalysis). CMEMS provides a sustainable response to European user needs in four areas of benefits: (i) maritime safety, (ii) marine resources, (iii) coastal and marine environment and (iv) weather, seasonal forecast and climate.

Description: Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service

Description: Published

Description: S1-S142

Description: 4A. Oceanografia e clima

Description: JCR Journal

Description: © The Authors, 2017. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Pascual, A., Ruiz, S., Olita, A., Troupin, C., Claret, M., Casas, B., Mourre, B., Poulain, P. M., Tovar-Sanchez, A., Capet, A., Mason, E., Allen, J. T., Mahadevan, A., & Tintore, J. A multiplatform experiment to unravel meso- and submesoscale processes in an intense front (AlborEx). Frontiers in Marine Science, 4(39), (2017), doi:10.3389/fmars.2017.00039.

Description: The challenges associated with meso- and submesoscale variability (between 1 and 100 km) require high-resolution observations and integrated approaches. Here we describe a major oceanographic experiment designed to capture the intense but transient vertical motions in an area characterized by strong fronts. Finescale processes were studied in the eastern Alboran Sea (Western Mediterranean) about 400 km east of the Strait of Gibraltar, a relatively sparsely sampled area. In-situ systems were coordinated with satellite data and numerical simulations to provide a full description of the physical and biogeochemical variability. Hydrographic data confirmed the presence of an intense salinity front formed by the confluence of Atlantic Waters, entering from Gibraltar, with the local Mediterranean waters. The drifters coherently followed the northeastern limb of an anticyclonic gyre. Near real time data from acoustic current meter data profiler showed consistent patterns with currents of up to 1 m/s in the southern part of the sampled domain. High-resolution glider data revealed submesoscale structures with tongues of chlorophyll-a and oxygen associated with the frontal zone. Numerical results show large vertical excursions of tracers that could explain the subducted tongues and filaments captured by ocean gliders. A unique aspect of AlborEx is the combination of high-resolution synoptic measurements of vessel-based measurements, autonomous sampling, remote sensing and modeling, enabling the evaluation of the underlying mechanisms responsible for the observed distributions and biogeochemical patchiness. The main findings point to the importance of fine-scale processes enhancing the vertical exchanges between the upper ocean and the ocean interior.

Description: The AlborEx experiment was conducted in the framework of PERSEUS EU-funded project (Grant agreement no: 287600). The experiment was led by the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) institution with strong involvement and cooperation from other national and international partners: Balearic Islands Coastal Observing and Forecasting System (SOCIB, Spain); Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR, Italy), McGill University (Canada); Istituto Nazionale di Oceanografia e di Geofisica Sperimentale (OGS, Italy) and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI, USA). Glider operations were partially funded by JERICO FP7 project. AP acknowledges support from the Spanish National Research Program (E-MOTION/CTM2012-31014 and PRE-SWOT/CTM2016-78607-P). SR and AP are also supported by the Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service (CMEMS) MedSUB project. EM is supported by a post-doctoral grant from the Conselleria d'Educació, Cultura i Universitats del Govern de les Illes Balears (Mallorca, Spain) and the European Social Fund. AC is a FNRS researcher under the FNRS BENTHOX project (Convention T.1009.15). The altimeter products were produced by Ssalto/Duacs and distributed by CMEMS. The profiling floats and some drifters were contributed by the Argo-Italy program. The authors are in debt with A. Massanet, F. Margirier, M. Palmer, C. Castilla, P. Balaguer and for their efficient work and implication during the AlborEx cruise. We also thank M. Menna, G. Notarstefano and A. Bussani for their help with the drifter and float data processing and the production of some figures. This article was initiated during a research visit of the first two authors to Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.