In this study, for the first time at regional scale, the combined use of remote sensing data (altimetry and sea surface temperature records) provides a description of the persistent, recurrent and transient circulation regimes of the Alborán Sea circulation. The analysis of 936 altimeter‐derived weekly absolute dynamic topography (ADT) and surface geostrophic current maps for 1993–2010 reveals the presence of a dominant annual signal and of two interannual modes of variability. The winter‐spring phase is characterized by two stable gyral scale features; the well‐known Western Anticyclonic Gyre within the western area and the Central Cyclonic Gyre, a new structure not identified in former studies, occupying the central and eastern parts of the Alborán Sea. A double anticyclonic gyre regime constitutes the stable circulation system of the summer–autumn period when the Eastern Anticyclonic Gyre is formed within the eastern Alborán basin. In this case, the Central Cyclonic Gyre is narrower and located closer to the Western Anticyclonic Gyre. They represent two stable states of the system, robust at the decadal time scale, whereas transient changes reflect perturbations on these stable states and are mainly observed at an interannual scale. The circulation variability and the gyral features development may be dynamically linked to the corresponding changes of the Gibraltar transport rates.

This paper tries to cast additional evidence on the proposed periodic behaviour of the N-S asymmetry in sudden disappearances (SD) of solar prominences (Vizoso and Ballester, 1987). We have performed a Blackman-Tukey power spectrum of the values of the SD N-S asymmetry and the results shows a significant peak, above 95% confidence level, at 12.4 years, another peak at 2.3 years fails to be statistically significant. Moreover, power spectrum performed with the values of N-S asymmetry of flare number and flare index (Vizoso and Ballester (1987) display significant peaks, above 95 % confidence level, around 3.1-3.2 years.

[1] The coastal areas of the North-Western Mediterranean Sea are one of the most challenging places for ocean forecasting. This region is exposed to severe storms events that are of short duration. During these events, significant air-sea interactions, strong winds and large sea-state can have catastrophic consequences in the coastal areas. To investigate these air-sea interactions and the oceanic response to such events, we implemented the Coupled Ocean-Atmosphere-Wave-Sediment Transport Modeling System simulating a severe storm in the Mediterranean Sea that occurred in May 2010. During this event, wind speed reached up to 25 m.s À1 inducing significant sea surface cooling (up to 2 C) over the Gulf of Lion (GoL) and along the storm track, and generating surface waves with a significant height of 6 m. It is shown that the event, associated with a cyclogenesis between the Balearic Islands and the GoL, is relatively well reproduced by the coupled system. A surface heat budget analysis showed that ocean vertical mixing was a major contributor to the cooling tendency along the storm track and in the GoL where turbulent heat fluxes also played an important role. Sensitivity experiments on the ocean-atmosphere coupling suggested that the coupled system is sensitive to the momentum flux parameterization as well as air-sea and air-wave coupling. Comparisons with available atmospheric and oceanic observations showed that the use of the fully coupled system provides the most skillful simulation, illustrating the benefit of using a fully coupled ocean-atmosphere-wave model for the assessment of these storm events.

Meteotsunamis are oceanic waves that possess tsunami‐like characteristics but are meteorological in origin. In the western Mediterranean, travelling atmospheric pressure oscillations generate these long oceanic surface waves that can become amplified and produce strong seiche oscillations inside harbors. We analyze a June 2006 meteotsunami event in Ciutadella harbor (Menorca Island, Spain), studying numerically the phenomenon during its full life cycle, from the early atmospheric stages to the atmosphere‐ocean resonant phase and the final highly amplified harbor oscillation. The Weather Research Forecast (WRF) atmospheric model adequately reproduces the development of a convective nucleus and also reproduces the induced atmospheric pressure oscillations moving at a speed of 27 m/s. The oceanic response is studied using the Regional Ocean Modeling System (ROMS), forced by the WRF pressure field. It shows an inverse barometer wave front in the open ocean progressively amplified through resonant interactions in the different shelf and coastal regions. The predictive capability of this new WRF/ROMS modeling approach is then discussed.