The Confluence 3 cruise during February 1990 provides the first hydrographic survey of the Brazil‐Malvinas Confluence region ever obtained with such a refined spatial resolution over the continental slope. The closely spaced stations on the slope permit the observation of the branching of the Malvinas Current near 40°S. The eastern branch returns south, while the eastern one is squeezed along the continental slope, managing to continue northward as far north as 36.3°S. The Brazil‐Malvinas (B‐M) front has a north‐south orientation on the slope and an east‐west direction offshore. The B‐M front is marked by very strong gradients in temperature and salinity. Fine scale vertical structures and intrusions are numerous in the vicinity of the front and cover a wide range of scales. The largest intrusion observed is a 50‐km‐wide, 350‐m‐thick subsurface lense of Thermocline Water present on the Malvinas side of the front. The fine scale vertical structure results in very high temperature and salinity fluxes across the front of the order of 2×10−2°C m−1 s−1 and 10−3 psu m−1 s−1. Two types of mode waters are identified as follows: Subtropical Mode Waters north of the front and Subantarctic Mode Waters on both sides of the front. The Subantarctic mode waters (SAMW) appear to recirculate near the western boundary. A young variety of SAMW (lighter, very oxygenated) propagates northward along the continental slope with the Malvinas Current. It detaches from the coast near 37°S and is strongly altered in the frontal region. It is then entrained southward with the Malvinas return flow and Brazil Current extension. The Confluence 3 hydrographic survey provides a good description of the North Atlantic Deep Water (NADW) and Circumpolar Deep Water (CDW) convergence near the western boundary. Strong, fine scale vertical structures are observed in the vicinity of the NADW/CDW front, and the associated temperature and salinity fluxes induced are strong, 5×10−3°cm/s and 2×10−3 psu.m/s, respectively.
Tintoré et al. Sustained Mediterranean Observing Forecasting SystemThe Mediterranean community represented in this paper is the result of more than 30 years of EU and nationally funded coordination, which has led to key contributions in science concepts and operational initiatives. Together with the establishment of operational services, the community has coordinated with universities, research centers, research infrastructures and private companies to implement advanced multi-platform and integrated observing and forecasting systems that facilitate the advancement of operational services, scientific achievements and mission-oriented innovation. Thus, the community can respond to societal challenges and stakeholders needs, developing a variety of fit-for-purpose services such as the Copernicus Marine Service. The combination of state-of-the-art observations and forecasting provides new opportunities for downstream services in response to the needs of the heavily populated Mediterranean coastal areas and to climate change. The challenge over the next decade is to sustain ocean observations within the research community, to monitor the variability at small scales, e.g., the mesoscale/submesoscale, to resolve the sub-basin/seasonal and inter-annual variability in the circulation, and thus establish the decadal variability, understand and correct the model-associated biases and to enhance model-data integration and ensemble forecasting for uncertainty estimation. Better knowledge and understanding of the level of Mediterranean variability will enable a subsequent evaluation of the impacts and mitigation of the effect of human activities and climate change on the biodiversity and the ecosystem, which will support environmental assessments and decisions. Further challenges include extending the science-based added-value products into societal relevant downstream services and engaging with communities to build initiatives that will contribute to the 2030 Agenda and more specifically to SDG14 and the UN's Decade of Ocean Science for sustainable development, by this contributing to bridge the science-policy gap. The Mediterranean observing and forecasting capacity was built on the basis of community best practices in monitoring and modeling, and can serve as a basis for the development of an integrated global ocean observing system.
PERSEUS project aims to identify the most relevant pressures exerted on the ecosystems of the Southern European Seas (SES), highlighting knowledge and data gaps that endanger the achievement of SES Good Environmental Status (GES) as mandated by the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD). A complementary approach has been adopted, by a meta-analysis of existing literature on pressure/impact/knowledge gaps summarized in tables related to the MSFD descriptors, discriminating open waters from coastal areas. A comparative assessment of the Initial Assessments (IAs) for five SES countries has been also independently performed. The comparison between meta-analysis results and IAs shows similarities for coastal areas only. Major knowledge gaps have been detected for the biodiversity, marine food web, marine litter and underwater noise descriptors. The meta-analysis also allowed the identification of additional research themes targeting research topics that are requested to the achievement of GES.
Climate change is likely to increase the pressure on the environment and on human systems that are requiring new assessment tools aimed at supporting decision-makers and stakeholders towards a more sustainable and effective management of the coastal environment and its resources. This research appraises an ensemble of models that integrates complex interactions of climate and anthropogenic impacts on vulnerable Mediterranean coastal areas with application to the Gulf of Gabes, Tunisia. Starting from Global and Regional Circulation Models, the models’ ensemble includes simulations of marine and atmospheric dynamics and biogeochemical processes in coastal waters under expected anthropogenic forcings, with a spatial domain ranging from subnational to local. In the case study area, the simulations showed that atmospheric temperature increase is likely to be around 4 °C in the summer months of 2100, relative to 1961–1990. In order to obtain the most reliable estimate of sea-level rate variations, satellite altimetry data have been processed over a period of 15 years (1993–2007) showing that sea-level changes on the Tunisian shelf were of the order of 2 mm/year. This value was considered as a reference for the sea-level change scenarios. As far as the water quality is concerned, the areas most impacted by pollution are located near major towns and human infrastructures, such as harbours. The set of results obtained by the proposed models’ ensemble may be suitable for supporting a scientific dialogue with stakeholders and for the implementation of exposure scenarios supporting a regional risk assessment approach to the entire Gulf of Gabes area
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