Main menu
You are here
MFS
MFS develops a strategy for the implementation of a Mediterranean Forecasting System aimed at the prediction of the marine ecosystem variability in the coastal areas up to the primary producers and 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 parts, an observing system and a numerical modelling/data assimilation component. The technical rationale of the Project is based upon the hypothesis that both hydrodynamics and ecosystem fluctuations in the coastal/shelf areas of the Mediterranean are intimately connected to the large scale general circulation. The secondassumption is that, for the physical components of the ecosystem, monitoring and numerical modelling can work almost pre-operationally. 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 project we develop and implement:
- a pilot automatic temperature monitoring system for the overall Mediterranean Sea (Voluntary Observing Ship-VOS system) with NRT data delivery;
- 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 biogeochemical and optical measurements in order to establish the feasibility of multiparametric monitoring of the upper thermocline in the whole basin;
- NRT satellite data (sea surface height, sea surface temperature and colour) analysis and mapping on the numerical model grid;
- different data assimilation schemes in order to assimilate multivariate parameters, e.g., XBT from the VOS system and satellite sea surface height and sea surface temperature;
- a strategy to carry out 3, 5 and 10 days ocean forecast experiments at the whole basin scale and for a total period of three months ;
- techniques to downscale the hydrodynamics to different shelf areas of the Mediterranean Sea with nested models of different resolution;
- ecosystem models in shelf areas of the basin and a strategy for validation/calibration with M3A data sets;
- methods for assimilating nutrient, chlorophyll and PAR into predictive ecosystem models ;
- realise an overall NRT data collection and dissemination network which should allow the timeliness release of data for the forecasting exercise.
see on the web site