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.
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