Rosalia Santoleri | Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR) (original) (raw)
Papers by Rosalia Santoleri
Esa Bulletin-european Space Agency, 2005
Oceans cover approximately 70% of the Earth's surface and, with about 60% of the World's ... more Oceans cover approximately 70% of the Earth's surface and, with about 60% of the World's population living within 200 km of the coast, they have an untold impact on all of us. Not surprisingly, for people living close to the coast or those who depend on the ocean for their livelihood, regular forecasts of ocean conditions are just as important as traditional weather forecasts. Therefore, development of the infrastructure needed to support and sustain independent, European operational ocean forecasting, and the associated coastal and marine information services, are key priorities of the joint Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) initiative by the European Commission and ESA.
ROADMAP FOR A GMES OPERATIONAL OCEANOGRAPHY MISSION Mark Drinkwater~1~' Helge Rebhan... more ROADMAP FOR A GMES OPERATIONAL OCEANOGRAPHY MISSION Mark Drinkwater~1~' Helge Rebhan~1~, Pierre-Yves Le Traon~2~, Laurent Pha1ippou~3~ David Cotton~4~, Johnny Johannessen~5~, Giulio Ruffini~6~, Pierre Bahure1~7~ Mike ...
This paper presents the Mediterranean Ocean Colour Observing System in the framework of the growi... more This paper presents the Mediterranean Ocean Colour Observing System in the framework of the growing demand of near real-time data emerging within the operational oceanography international context. The main issues related to the satellite operational oceanography are tied to the following: (1) the near real-time ability to track data flow uncertainty sources; (2) in case of failure, to provide backup solutions to end-users; and (3) to scientifically assess the product quality. We describe the major scientific and technological steps made to develop, maintain and improve the operational system and its products. A method for assessing the near real-time product quality is developed and its limitation discussed. Main results are concerned with the degradation, starting from mid-2010, of the MODIS Aqua channel at 443 nm with its successive recovery thanks to the new calibration scheme implemented in the recently released SeaDAS version 6.4. The product validation analysis highlights that SeaWiFS chlorophyll product over the Mediterranean Sea is the best performing in comparison with those of MODIS and MERIS. Despite their general good agreement with in situ observations, MODIS-and MERIS-derived chlorophyll present a slight and systematic underestimation of the in situ counter part. The most relevant implications induced by these results are discussed from an operational point of view.
Geophysical Research Letters, 2005
ABSTRACT A new method to estimate radiation budgets at air-sea interface by means of AVHRR data h... more ABSTRACT A new method to estimate radiation budgets at air-sea interface by means of AVHRR data has been developed and tested in the framework of the Arctic Radiation and Turbulence Interaction Study (ARTIST). Main goal of the ARTIST project is assess the effects of clouds and of Arctic Haze on the radiative fluxes at the surface and in the atmospheric column in the European Arctic. One month of Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) data relative to the period March - April 1998 has been processed and analyzed in order to evaluate short and long wave radiation budgets in the Arctic Sea during the experiment. Remote sensing data (NOAA 14 satellite) have been acquired at the Tromso station and then processed at the Istituto Fisica dell'Atmosfera (IFA) to produce maps of surface albedo and brightness temperature of the experiment's zone. These maps were used to develop a new cloud detection algorithm for the region. Image pixels then have been classified as ice, clouds or water. The method was applied to 151 available AVHRR scenes. The pixels classification performance was verified against the analysis of an expert in satellite image. The cloud classification results to be quite accurate. In fact 99 images are classified as 'very good' by the expert and 37 images the accuracy is a little lower. The radiation budgets are then estimated using several available empirical formulae for clear sky and overcast conditions. The results were compared with in situ measurements made during the ARTIST experiment in order to define the best parameterization of the fluxes. The best estimates of shortwave incoming radiation results from the Bennet (1982) formula for clear sky condition with the Laevastu (1960) correction for overcast condition. The more accurate estimate of incoming long wave radiation in clear sky has been obtained using the Swinbank (1963) parameterization. Finally, averaged map of total radiation budget are calculated for the time period of the ARTIST experiment in the Arctic region.
ABSTRACT Many studies indicate that the atmosphere is a significant and in some cases the dominan... more ABSTRACT Many studies indicate that the atmosphere is a significant and in some cases the dominant pathway by which specific elements are transported from the land to the open sea. The Mediterranean Sea is a semi-enclosed basin, that continuously receives anthropogenic substances from the industrialized European country, and sporadically, from the arid region of the Sahara desert, nearly the 90% of the total amount of aerosols that reach the sea surface. The Mediterranean is a predominantly oligotrophic basin with areas of high productivity limited to areas influenced by runoff, rivers or upwelling. In situ biogeochemical measurements indicate that atmospheric deposition can induce significant productivity changes. The present work aims to use SeaWiFS satellite data and the SKIRON atmospheric model to provide an estimate of the temporal and spatial variability in the atmospheric forcing (dust events) and in the marine biological response (blooms), and to evaluate the overall contribution of these Saharan dust events to the fertility of the Mediterranean Sea. Although biological dynamic is meanly driven by the circulation features of the basin, results show that the atmospheric nutrient deposition gives some evident response in the biological activity.
Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, 2014
The Mediterranean Forecasting System (MFS) Ocean Model, provided by 4 INGV, has been chosen as ca... more The Mediterranean Forecasting System (MFS) Ocean Model, provided by 4 INGV, has been chosen as case study to analyze Lagrangian trajectory pre-5 dictability by means of a dynamical systems approach. To this regard, nu-6 merical trajectories are tested against a large amount of Mediterranean drifter 7 data, used as sample of the actual tracer dynamics across the sea. The sep-8 aration rate of a trajectory pair is measured by computing the Finite-Scale 9 Lyapunov Exponent (FSLE) of first and second kind. An additional kine-10 matic Lagrangian model (KLM), suitably treated to avoid "sweeping"-related 11 problems, has been nested into the MFS in order to recover, in a statistical 12 sense, the velocity field contributions to pair particle dispersion, at mesoscale 13 level, smoothed out by finite resolution effects. Some of the results emerg-14 ing from this work are: a) drifter pair dispersion displays Richardson's tur-15 bulent diffusion inside the [10-100] km range, while numerical simulations 16 of MFS alone (i.e. without subgrid model) indicate exponential separation; 17 b) adding the subgrid model, model pair dispersion gets very close to observed 18 data, indicating that KLM is effective in filling the energy "mesoscale gap" 19 present in MFS velocity fields; c) there exists a threshold size beyond which 20 pair dispersion becomes weakly sensitive to the difference between model and 21 "real" dynamics; d) the whole methodology here presented can be used to 22 quantify model errors and validate numerical current fields, as far as fore-23 casts of Lagrangian dispersion are concerned.
Continental Shelf Research, 1986
Large amplitude internal waves were observed north and south of the Strait of Messina during two ... more Large amplitude internal waves were observed north and south of the Strait of Messina during two different periods. A comparison between the two sets of data is made. The behaviour of the shape of the waves is analysed from the physical parameters and two possible interpretations of these waves are given. The mechanism of formation related to the tide in
Journal of Geophysical Research, 2003
This work is aimed at studying the variability of Rhodes and Ierapetra Gyres during the Levantine... more This work is aimed at studying the variability of Rhodes and Ierapetra Gyres during the Levantine Intermediate Water Experiment. Sea surface temperature maps, derived from Global Area Coverage advanced very high resolution radiometer (AVHRR) data in the framework of the Pathfinder Project and sea level anomalies, derived from TOPEX/Poseidon altimeter, were used to track the evolution, both in terms of dimension and position, of the cyclonic Rhode Gyre and Ierapetra anticyclone. The analysis was performed for the period from October 1994 to the end of April 1995, i.e., from the preconditioning to the spreading phase of Levantine Intermediate Water. The description of the surface fields was complemented by a temporal evolution study of the Rhodes and Ierapetra Gyres hydrological vertical structure. European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts AVHRR-derived fluxes have been used as forcing for a numerical model to study the variability of the mixed layer in both gyres. The simula...
Journal of Geophysical Research, 2007
1] The objective of this work is to gain new insight on the variability and offshore export of tu... more 1] The objective of this work is to gain new insight on the variability and offshore export of turbid coastal waters in the Adriatic Sea, which are optically classified as Case 2 waters. This is done by means of the 1998-2004 SeaWiFS ocean color products (chlorophyll, Case 2 flags and light attenuation coefficient at 490 nm, k 490 ) and NOAA AVHRR sea surface temperature. The role of wind-driven circulation in the redistribution of the above ocean color features is also analyzed both at seasonal and interannual time scales and in the light of particular wind and current situations occurring in 2003, via scatterometer wind data as well as atmospheric and marine circulation medium and high resolution model output. Results indicate that turbid (Case 2) waters are exported offshore at the Po delta and Ancona headland during the colder months, in concomitance of Bora wind events and when the 2003 daily Po river discharge is above about 500 m 3 s À1 and 1000 m 3 s À1 , respectively. Southeasterly Sirocco events do not to originate extensive offshore transport, but only locally modify the shape of the WAC front. Mistral episodes enhance the WAC flow into the Ionian Sea. Finally, estimates of coastal current width and length from Case 2 flag distribution follow the Po discharge pattern, confirming this forcing to be the main responsible for WAC width seasonal modulation. Experimental WAC widths agree reasonably with theoretical analyses, while underestimation of WAC length suggests the necessity to include the other Italian rivers in the freshwater discharge evaluation.
International Journal of Remote Sensing, 2003
In this paper we present a cloud detection algorithm developed for the Arctic region using Advanc... more In this paper we present a cloud detection algorithm developed for the Arctic region using Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) data. Our approach is a simplified version of the Ebert method to discriminate between clouds, ice and open water in the Arctic Sea. The algorithm is tuned to work on an AVHRR scene typical of the winter to spring transition period. The algorithm has been applied to 1 month (154 scenes) of NOAA-14 AVHRR images (from 16 March to 15 April 1998) covering the region of the Arctic Sea near the Svalbard Islands. The cloud detection results are analysed using various check procedures. The algorithm's pixel classification performance was verified by a satellite image expert. The misclassified pixels were digitalized on the image and counted by the expert in order to quantify the algorithm's accuracy. The cloud classification results are quite accurate: 70% of the images (109) have an error less than 5% and only 11% of the image results have an error greater than 10%. The method's performance is also tested against independent cloud and ice observations obtained, respectively, from the Ny-Å lesund meteorological base and from the Special Sensor Microwave/Imager (SSM/I) dataset. The comparison with these independent sources of data confirms the algorithm's good performance.
Annales Geophysicae, 2003
Two years and six months of night-time Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) sea surfa... more Two years and six months of night-time Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) sea surface temperature (SST) and daytime Sea viewing Wide Field of view Sensor (SeaWiFS) data collected during the MF-SPP have been used to examine spatial and temporal variability of SST and chlorophyll (Chl) in the Adriatic Sea. Flows along the Albanian and the Italian coasts can be distinguished year-round in the monthly averaged Chl but only in the colder months in the monthly averaged SST's. The Chl monthly-averaged fields supply less information on circulation features away from coastal boundaries and where conditions are generally oligotrophic, except for the early spring bloom in the Southern Adriatic Gyre. To better characterise the year-to-year and seasonal variability, exploratory data analysis techniques, particularly the plotting of multiple Chl-SST histograms, are employed to make joint quantitative use of monthly-averaged fields. Modal water mass (MW), corresponding to the Chl-SST pairs in the neighbourhood of the maximum of each monthly histogram, are chosen to represent the temporal and spatial evolution of the prevalent processes and their variability in the Adriatic Sea. Over an annual cycle, the MW followed a triangular path with the most pronounced seasonal and interannual variations in both Chl-SST properties and spatial distributions of the MW in the colder part of the year. The winter of 1999 is the colder (by at least 0.5 • C) and most eutrophic (by 0.2 mg/m 3 ). The fall of the year 2000 is characterised by the lack of cooling in the month of November that was observed in the previous year. In addition to characterising the MW, the twodimensional histogram technique allows a distinction to be made between different months in terms of the spread of SST values at a given Chl concentration. During spring and summer, the spread is minimal indicating surface homothermal conditions. In fall and winter, on the other hand, a spread of points suggesting a linear negative correlation between SST and Chl is found. This behaviour is related to the high nutri-Correspondence to: E. Böhm (e.bohm@isac.cnr.it) ent content of cooler water associated with upwelling or the Po River fresh water outflow.
Annales Geophysicae, 2003
The Near Real Time (NRT) operational products developed from satellite data (AVHRR, Topex/Poseido... more The Near Real Time (NRT) operational products developed from satellite data (AVHRR, Topex/Poseidon, Ers-2) in the framework of the Mediterranean Forecasting System Pilot Project (MFSPP, autumn 1998(MFSPP, autumn -autumn 2000 are described and compared to delayed time products over the Mediterranean sea. MFSPP SLA and SST data are then discussed in the general context of the Mediterranean circulation, showing the interannual variability of the fields and identifying recurrent or anomalous features at mesoscale/sub-basin scales. Finally, MFSPP data are used to test, on a regional (Mediterranean) context, a multi-variate method to identify coupled modes of variability, consisting in the SVD of the covariance between SST and SLA.
Operational oceanography requires availability of remotely sensed data, for example sea surface t... more Operational oceanography requires availability of remotely sensed data, for example sea surface temperature (SST), in near realtime (NRT). A system is presented that makes use of a combination of state of the art NASA Pathfinder SST (PFSST) algorithm and cloud detection procedures both adapted to operate in NRT. A novel cloud detection algorithm that makes use of a reference image
Nature Geoscience, 2012
The historic flood of 2011 provided a unique opportunity to examine how river flows carry sedimen... more The historic flood of 2011 provided a unique opportunity to examine how river flows carry sediment into marshes during a high water event and discover how differences in hydrodynamics between the Mississippi and Atchafalaya Rivers influenced wetland sedimentation.
Esa Bulletin-european Space Agency, 2005
Oceans cover approximately 70% of the Earth's surface and, with about 60% of the World's ... more Oceans cover approximately 70% of the Earth's surface and, with about 60% of the World's population living within 200 km of the coast, they have an untold impact on all of us. Not surprisingly, for people living close to the coast or those who depend on the ocean for their livelihood, regular forecasts of ocean conditions are just as important as traditional weather forecasts. Therefore, development of the infrastructure needed to support and sustain independent, European operational ocean forecasting, and the associated coastal and marine information services, are key priorities of the joint Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) initiative by the European Commission and ESA.
ROADMAP FOR A GMES OPERATIONAL OCEANOGRAPHY MISSION Mark Drinkwater~1~' Helge Rebhan... more ROADMAP FOR A GMES OPERATIONAL OCEANOGRAPHY MISSION Mark Drinkwater~1~' Helge Rebhan~1~, Pierre-Yves Le Traon~2~, Laurent Pha1ippou~3~ David Cotton~4~, Johnny Johannessen~5~, Giulio Ruffini~6~, Pierre Bahure1~7~ Mike ...
This paper presents the Mediterranean Ocean Colour Observing System in the framework of the growi... more This paper presents the Mediterranean Ocean Colour Observing System in the framework of the growing demand of near real-time data emerging within the operational oceanography international context. The main issues related to the satellite operational oceanography are tied to the following: (1) the near real-time ability to track data flow uncertainty sources; (2) in case of failure, to provide backup solutions to end-users; and (3) to scientifically assess the product quality. We describe the major scientific and technological steps made to develop, maintain and improve the operational system and its products. A method for assessing the near real-time product quality is developed and its limitation discussed. Main results are concerned with the degradation, starting from mid-2010, of the MODIS Aqua channel at 443 nm with its successive recovery thanks to the new calibration scheme implemented in the recently released SeaDAS version 6.4. The product validation analysis highlights that SeaWiFS chlorophyll product over the Mediterranean Sea is the best performing in comparison with those of MODIS and MERIS. Despite their general good agreement with in situ observations, MODIS-and MERIS-derived chlorophyll present a slight and systematic underestimation of the in situ counter part. The most relevant implications induced by these results are discussed from an operational point of view.
Geophysical Research Letters, 2005
ABSTRACT A new method to estimate radiation budgets at air-sea interface by means of AVHRR data h... more ABSTRACT A new method to estimate radiation budgets at air-sea interface by means of AVHRR data has been developed and tested in the framework of the Arctic Radiation and Turbulence Interaction Study (ARTIST). Main goal of the ARTIST project is assess the effects of clouds and of Arctic Haze on the radiative fluxes at the surface and in the atmospheric column in the European Arctic. One month of Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) data relative to the period March - April 1998 has been processed and analyzed in order to evaluate short and long wave radiation budgets in the Arctic Sea during the experiment. Remote sensing data (NOAA 14 satellite) have been acquired at the Tromso station and then processed at the Istituto Fisica dell'Atmosfera (IFA) to produce maps of surface albedo and brightness temperature of the experiment's zone. These maps were used to develop a new cloud detection algorithm for the region. Image pixels then have been classified as ice, clouds or water. The method was applied to 151 available AVHRR scenes. The pixels classification performance was verified against the analysis of an expert in satellite image. The cloud classification results to be quite accurate. In fact 99 images are classified as 'very good' by the expert and 37 images the accuracy is a little lower. The radiation budgets are then estimated using several available empirical formulae for clear sky and overcast conditions. The results were compared with in situ measurements made during the ARTIST experiment in order to define the best parameterization of the fluxes. The best estimates of shortwave incoming radiation results from the Bennet (1982) formula for clear sky condition with the Laevastu (1960) correction for overcast condition. The more accurate estimate of incoming long wave radiation in clear sky has been obtained using the Swinbank (1963) parameterization. Finally, averaged map of total radiation budget are calculated for the time period of the ARTIST experiment in the Arctic region.
ABSTRACT Many studies indicate that the atmosphere is a significant and in some cases the dominan... more ABSTRACT Many studies indicate that the atmosphere is a significant and in some cases the dominant pathway by which specific elements are transported from the land to the open sea. The Mediterranean Sea is a semi-enclosed basin, that continuously receives anthropogenic substances from the industrialized European country, and sporadically, from the arid region of the Sahara desert, nearly the 90% of the total amount of aerosols that reach the sea surface. The Mediterranean is a predominantly oligotrophic basin with areas of high productivity limited to areas influenced by runoff, rivers or upwelling. In situ biogeochemical measurements indicate that atmospheric deposition can induce significant productivity changes. The present work aims to use SeaWiFS satellite data and the SKIRON atmospheric model to provide an estimate of the temporal and spatial variability in the atmospheric forcing (dust events) and in the marine biological response (blooms), and to evaluate the overall contribution of these Saharan dust events to the fertility of the Mediterranean Sea. Although biological dynamic is meanly driven by the circulation features of the basin, results show that the atmospheric nutrient deposition gives some evident response in the biological activity.
Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, 2014
The Mediterranean Forecasting System (MFS) Ocean Model, provided by 4 INGV, has been chosen as ca... more The Mediterranean Forecasting System (MFS) Ocean Model, provided by 4 INGV, has been chosen as case study to analyze Lagrangian trajectory pre-5 dictability by means of a dynamical systems approach. To this regard, nu-6 merical trajectories are tested against a large amount of Mediterranean drifter 7 data, used as sample of the actual tracer dynamics across the sea. The sep-8 aration rate of a trajectory pair is measured by computing the Finite-Scale 9 Lyapunov Exponent (FSLE) of first and second kind. An additional kine-10 matic Lagrangian model (KLM), suitably treated to avoid "sweeping"-related 11 problems, has been nested into the MFS in order to recover, in a statistical 12 sense, the velocity field contributions to pair particle dispersion, at mesoscale 13 level, smoothed out by finite resolution effects. Some of the results emerg-14 ing from this work are: a) drifter pair dispersion displays Richardson's tur-15 bulent diffusion inside the [10-100] km range, while numerical simulations 16 of MFS alone (i.e. without subgrid model) indicate exponential separation; 17 b) adding the subgrid model, model pair dispersion gets very close to observed 18 data, indicating that KLM is effective in filling the energy "mesoscale gap" 19 present in MFS velocity fields; c) there exists a threshold size beyond which 20 pair dispersion becomes weakly sensitive to the difference between model and 21 "real" dynamics; d) the whole methodology here presented can be used to 22 quantify model errors and validate numerical current fields, as far as fore-23 casts of Lagrangian dispersion are concerned.
Continental Shelf Research, 1986
Large amplitude internal waves were observed north and south of the Strait of Messina during two ... more Large amplitude internal waves were observed north and south of the Strait of Messina during two different periods. A comparison between the two sets of data is made. The behaviour of the shape of the waves is analysed from the physical parameters and two possible interpretations of these waves are given. The mechanism of formation related to the tide in
Journal of Geophysical Research, 2003
This work is aimed at studying the variability of Rhodes and Ierapetra Gyres during the Levantine... more This work is aimed at studying the variability of Rhodes and Ierapetra Gyres during the Levantine Intermediate Water Experiment. Sea surface temperature maps, derived from Global Area Coverage advanced very high resolution radiometer (AVHRR) data in the framework of the Pathfinder Project and sea level anomalies, derived from TOPEX/Poseidon altimeter, were used to track the evolution, both in terms of dimension and position, of the cyclonic Rhode Gyre and Ierapetra anticyclone. The analysis was performed for the period from October 1994 to the end of April 1995, i.e., from the preconditioning to the spreading phase of Levantine Intermediate Water. The description of the surface fields was complemented by a temporal evolution study of the Rhodes and Ierapetra Gyres hydrological vertical structure. European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts AVHRR-derived fluxes have been used as forcing for a numerical model to study the variability of the mixed layer in both gyres. The simula...
Journal of Geophysical Research, 2007
1] The objective of this work is to gain new insight on the variability and offshore export of tu... more 1] The objective of this work is to gain new insight on the variability and offshore export of turbid coastal waters in the Adriatic Sea, which are optically classified as Case 2 waters. This is done by means of the 1998-2004 SeaWiFS ocean color products (chlorophyll, Case 2 flags and light attenuation coefficient at 490 nm, k 490 ) and NOAA AVHRR sea surface temperature. The role of wind-driven circulation in the redistribution of the above ocean color features is also analyzed both at seasonal and interannual time scales and in the light of particular wind and current situations occurring in 2003, via scatterometer wind data as well as atmospheric and marine circulation medium and high resolution model output. Results indicate that turbid (Case 2) waters are exported offshore at the Po delta and Ancona headland during the colder months, in concomitance of Bora wind events and when the 2003 daily Po river discharge is above about 500 m 3 s À1 and 1000 m 3 s À1 , respectively. Southeasterly Sirocco events do not to originate extensive offshore transport, but only locally modify the shape of the WAC front. Mistral episodes enhance the WAC flow into the Ionian Sea. Finally, estimates of coastal current width and length from Case 2 flag distribution follow the Po discharge pattern, confirming this forcing to be the main responsible for WAC width seasonal modulation. Experimental WAC widths agree reasonably with theoretical analyses, while underestimation of WAC length suggests the necessity to include the other Italian rivers in the freshwater discharge evaluation.
International Journal of Remote Sensing, 2003
In this paper we present a cloud detection algorithm developed for the Arctic region using Advanc... more In this paper we present a cloud detection algorithm developed for the Arctic region using Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) data. Our approach is a simplified version of the Ebert method to discriminate between clouds, ice and open water in the Arctic Sea. The algorithm is tuned to work on an AVHRR scene typical of the winter to spring transition period. The algorithm has been applied to 1 month (154 scenes) of NOAA-14 AVHRR images (from 16 March to 15 April 1998) covering the region of the Arctic Sea near the Svalbard Islands. The cloud detection results are analysed using various check procedures. The algorithm's pixel classification performance was verified by a satellite image expert. The misclassified pixels were digitalized on the image and counted by the expert in order to quantify the algorithm's accuracy. The cloud classification results are quite accurate: 70% of the images (109) have an error less than 5% and only 11% of the image results have an error greater than 10%. The method's performance is also tested against independent cloud and ice observations obtained, respectively, from the Ny-Å lesund meteorological base and from the Special Sensor Microwave/Imager (SSM/I) dataset. The comparison with these independent sources of data confirms the algorithm's good performance.
Annales Geophysicae, 2003
Two years and six months of night-time Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) sea surfa... more Two years and six months of night-time Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) sea surface temperature (SST) and daytime Sea viewing Wide Field of view Sensor (SeaWiFS) data collected during the MF-SPP have been used to examine spatial and temporal variability of SST and chlorophyll (Chl) in the Adriatic Sea. Flows along the Albanian and the Italian coasts can be distinguished year-round in the monthly averaged Chl but only in the colder months in the monthly averaged SST's. The Chl monthly-averaged fields supply less information on circulation features away from coastal boundaries and where conditions are generally oligotrophic, except for the early spring bloom in the Southern Adriatic Gyre. To better characterise the year-to-year and seasonal variability, exploratory data analysis techniques, particularly the plotting of multiple Chl-SST histograms, are employed to make joint quantitative use of monthly-averaged fields. Modal water mass (MW), corresponding to the Chl-SST pairs in the neighbourhood of the maximum of each monthly histogram, are chosen to represent the temporal and spatial evolution of the prevalent processes and their variability in the Adriatic Sea. Over an annual cycle, the MW followed a triangular path with the most pronounced seasonal and interannual variations in both Chl-SST properties and spatial distributions of the MW in the colder part of the year. The winter of 1999 is the colder (by at least 0.5 • C) and most eutrophic (by 0.2 mg/m 3 ). The fall of the year 2000 is characterised by the lack of cooling in the month of November that was observed in the previous year. In addition to characterising the MW, the twodimensional histogram technique allows a distinction to be made between different months in terms of the spread of SST values at a given Chl concentration. During spring and summer, the spread is minimal indicating surface homothermal conditions. In fall and winter, on the other hand, a spread of points suggesting a linear negative correlation between SST and Chl is found. This behaviour is related to the high nutri-Correspondence to: E. Böhm (e.bohm@isac.cnr.it) ent content of cooler water associated with upwelling or the Po River fresh water outflow.
Annales Geophysicae, 2003
The Near Real Time (NRT) operational products developed from satellite data (AVHRR, Topex/Poseido... more The Near Real Time (NRT) operational products developed from satellite data (AVHRR, Topex/Poseidon, Ers-2) in the framework of the Mediterranean Forecasting System Pilot Project (MFSPP, autumn 1998(MFSPP, autumn -autumn 2000 are described and compared to delayed time products over the Mediterranean sea. MFSPP SLA and SST data are then discussed in the general context of the Mediterranean circulation, showing the interannual variability of the fields and identifying recurrent or anomalous features at mesoscale/sub-basin scales. Finally, MFSPP data are used to test, on a regional (Mediterranean) context, a multi-variate method to identify coupled modes of variability, consisting in the SVD of the covariance between SST and SLA.
Operational oceanography requires availability of remotely sensed data, for example sea surface t... more Operational oceanography requires availability of remotely sensed data, for example sea surface temperature (SST), in near realtime (NRT). A system is presented that makes use of a combination of state of the art NASA Pathfinder SST (PFSST) algorithm and cloud detection procedures both adapted to operate in NRT. A novel cloud detection algorithm that makes use of a reference image
Nature Geoscience, 2012
The historic flood of 2011 provided a unique opportunity to examine how river flows carry sedimen... more The historic flood of 2011 provided a unique opportunity to examine how river flows carry sediment into marshes during a high water event and discover how differences in hydrodynamics between the Mississippi and Atchafalaya Rivers influenced wetland sedimentation.