This paper presents the first comprehensive review of the Mediterranean and Black Sea meteorological tsunamis or meteotsunamis (atmospherically induced destructive long ocean waves in the tsunami frequency band) based on the available literature, tools and services. The Mediterranean and Black Seas are micro-tidal basins; therefore, rapid sea level changes in the tsunami frequency band may strongly affect coastal regions and infrastructures and endanger human lives. The review also includes a succinct bibliography of Mediterranean and Black Sea meteotsunami papers and evaluates their structure in respect to geographical extent, the type of tools used (observations versus modelling) and source processes in the atmosphere versus ocean manifestations. This review continues with a presentation of major meteotsunami events and a discussion about their sources, the resonant transfer of energy towards the sea, their propagation towards shore and their interactions with bathymetry. Meteotsunami monitoring and forecasting systems are overviewed with respect to available observations, deterministic and stochastic modelling tools and operational early warning networks. This review includes an important assessment of operational and research gaps and ideas for improving research tools and understanding of various aspects of meteotsunamis. The authors believe and hope that this review will help researchers and services to increase or improve their capacities and skills for conducting better research on meteotsunamis, not just in the Mediterranean and Black Seas, but in all ocean basins around the world affected by this destructive and dangerous phenomenon.
Abstract. Sea-level observations provide information on a variety
of processes occurring over different temporal and spatial scales that may
contribute to coastal flooding and hazards. However, global research on
sea-level extremes is restricted to hourly datasets, which prevent
the quantification and analyses of processes occurring at timescales between a
few minutes and a few hours. These shorter-period processes, like seiches,
meteotsunamis, infragravity and coastal waves, may even dominate in
low tidal basins. Therefore, a new global 1 min sea-level dataset –
MISELA (Minute Sea-Level Analysis) – has been developed, encompassing
quality-checked records of nonseismic sea-level oscillations at tsunami
timescales (T<2 h) obtained from 331 tide-gauge sites (https://doi.org/10.14284/456, Zemunik et al., 2021b). This paper describes
data quality control procedures applied to the MISELA dataset, world and
regional coverage of tide-gauge sites, and lengths of time series. The
dataset is appropriate for global, regional or local research of
atmospherically induced high-frequency sea-level oscillations, which should
be included in the overall sea-level extremes assessments.
Abstract. The paper documents seasonality, interannual-to-decadal
variability, and trends in temperature, salinity, and density over a transect
in the shallow northern Adriatic Sea (Mediterranean Sea) between 1979 and
2017. The amplitude of seasonality decreases with depth and is much larger
in temperature and density than in salinity. Time series of temperature and
salinity are correlated in the surface but not in the bottom layer. Trends
in temperature are large (up to 0.6 ∘C over 10 years), significant
through the area, and not sensitive to the sampling interval and time series
length. In contrast, trends in salinity are largely small and insignificant
and depend on the time series length. The warming of the area is more
during spring and summer. Such large temperature trends and their spatial
variability emphasize the importance of maintaining regular long-term
observations for the proper estimation of thermohaline trends and their
variability. This is particularly important in regions which are key for
driving thermohaline circulation such as the northern Adriatic, with the
potential to affect biogeochemical and ecological properties of the whole
Adriatic Sea.
Worldwide tsunamis driven by atmospheric waves – or planetary meteotsunami waves – are extremely rare events. They mostly occur during supervolcano explosions or asteroid impacts capable to generate atmospheric acoustic-gravity waves including the Lamb waves that can circle the globe multiple times. Recently, such ocean waves have been globally recorded after the Hunga Tonga–Hunga Ha’apai volcano eruption on 15 January 2022, but did not pose any serious danger to the coastal communities. However, this study highlights that the mostly ignored destructive potential of planetary meteotsunami waves can be compared to the well-studied tsunami hazards. In practice, several process-oriented numerical experiments are designed to force a global ocean model with the realistic atmospheric response to the Hunga Tonga–Hunga Ha’apai event rescaled in speed and amplitude. These simulations demonstrate that the meteotsunami surges can be higher than 1 m (and up to 10 m) along more than 7 % of the world coastlines. Planetary meteotsunami waves thus have the potential to cause serious coastal damages and even human casualties during volcanic explosions or asteroid impacts either releasing intense acoustic energy or producing internal atmospheric gravity waves triggering the deep-ocean Proudman resonance at a speed of ~212 m/s. Based on records of catastrophic events in the Earth’s history, both scenarios are found to be realistic and, consequently, the global meteotsunami hazards should now be properly assessed to prepare for the next big volcanic eruption or asteroid impact even occurring inland.
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