High resolution Atlas of Surface Currents in South European seas

Sea surface currents are probably one of the most relevant variable for a variety of challenges concerning the the marine environment management (e.g. safe and efficient navigation, pollution dispersion, ecological connectivity, ...). Within the framework of the MED OSMoSIS and COSMO projects, the ICM-CSIC has developed an atlas of surface and subsurface (depth ~ 15 m) currents for the Southern European seas: the Mediterranean basin and the Canary-Iberian-Biscay waters (Martinez et al., 2022).

Surface Climatological Currents for May

The Atlas is based on today’s state of the art reanalyses of the ocean circulation provided by the Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service (CMEMS). Climatological values are computed from the median of the empirical probability density functions. The Atlas also includes the variance matrix as well as a bimodality index providing further quantitative information about temporal variability of the current at each location.

Rose of currents and variance matrix


For the Canary-Iberian-Biscay domain, the monthly climatological surface currents capture accurately the characteristic seasonal signal and its transition between a favourable and non-favourable upwelling regime. In the Mediterranean basin, the differences between the near-surface and the 15 m velocity fields suggest a non-negligible role of winds over the variability of the uppermost ocean layer, specially in the Eastern Mediterranean basin. In some regions, interannual variability is revealed by characteristic bimodal and multimodal probability distributions. The Atlas has been conceived with the purpose of providing a first quantitative assessment of the surface circulation, thus being a complementary tool for real-time ocean forecasting systems and navigation planning

The Atlas is accompanied with a digital version, with enhanced visualization capabilities for both research and assessment (see COSMO).

Notes:

COSMO: Ocean currents and security in the Marine environment (CTM2016-79474-R). project funded by Spanish Program in Research and Innovation.

Martínez J., E. García-Ladona, J. Ballabrera-Poy, J. isern-Fontanet, S. González-Motos, J. M Allegue and C. González-Haro, 2022, Atlas of surface currents and their variability in the Mediterranean and Canary-Iberian-Biscay waters, Journal of Operational Oceanography (Under review

Author: Dr. Emilio García Ladona (CSIC-ICM)

Update June 2022:

the surface (z~0) currents  for June (in black)


the subsurface (z~15m) currents for June (in pink)



Update July 2022:

Map of climatological currents for July (surface) (in black)



 Map of climatological currents for July (subsurface) (in pink)


Update August: 
Map of climatological currents for August (surface) (in black)



Map of climatological currents for August (subsurface) (in pink)


Comments

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