N. Voltzinger

Tidal Records as Liquid Climate Archives for Large-Scale Interior Mediterranean Variability

Characterization of interior ocean variability is necessary for understanding climate. Water mass evolution shapes ocean-atmosphere interactions and contributes to determine timescales for global and regional climate variability. However, a robust assessment of past state and variability of the ocean interior is prevented by sparseness/shortness of historical subsurface observations and uncertainties affecting proxy-based reconstructions. Here, we propose a novel approach to infer past large-scale interior ocean variability with unprecedented accuracy and temporal resolution. It exploits links between stratification determined by “large-scale” water mass distributions and local dynamics. We characterize interannual interior ocean variability in the Mediterranean Sea in the early 20th century contained in tidal measurements in the Strait of Messina, and demonstrate the general applicability of our method, paving the way to a new approach to analyze historical oceanographic records: Regions where different water masses are known to collide can thus act as magnifying glasses for basin-scale interior ocean variability, hence providing “liquid archives” for climatology.

Non-Hydrostatic Dynamics of a Region with an Underwater Mountain

Non-hydrostatic boundary–value problem is considered in the 3-D domain representing a strait with an underwater sill. The equations are integrated in the boundary–fitted coordinates on irregular grid. For detection of non-hydrostatic effects the grid has increased resolution at sill slopes. The method is applied for simulation non-hydrostatic dynamics in the Strait of Messina.