Modeling the biogeochemical dynamics of the Northern Adriatic Sea with an explicit benthic-pelagic coupling

Author(s):  
Isabella Scroccaro ◽  
Marco Zavatarelli ◽  
Tomas Lovato

<p>A high resolution three-dimensional (physical-biogeochemical) numerical model of the Northern Adriatic Sea has been implemented by coupling the European general circulation model - NEMO (Nucleus for European Modeling of the Ocean, https://www.nemo-ocean.eu/), with the marine biogeochemical model BFM (Biogeochemical Flux Model, bfm-community.eu/).</p><p>The modeling system is implemented with a horizontal resolution of about 800 m and a vertical resolution of 2 m, in z coordinates. The NEMO model is off-line nested at its open boundary with the Mediterranean Sea physical model of the Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service (CMEMS, http://marine.copernicus.eu/).</p><p>The BFM component of the modeling system now includes a detailed and explicit representation of the benthic biogeochemical cycling (benthic fauna, organic matter, nutrients), as well as the dynamics of the benthic-pelagic processes.</p><p>The inclusion of the benthic dynamics in the 3D biogeochemical modeling of a shallow coastal basin, such as the Northern Adriatic Sea, represents an innovative application in the field of coastal and shelf biogeochemistry, since benthic biogeochemical processes can significantly constrain the coastal environmental dynamics.</p><p>Simulations have been performed in hindcasting mode with interannually varying physical (surface heat and water fluxes, including river runoff) and biogeochemical (river nutrient load) forcing. Results are validated against available observations from in situ and satellite platforms for sea surface temperatures, chlorophyll-a and dissolved inorganic nutrients, in order to explore the sensitivity of the pelagic environment to the inclusion of an explicit benthic dynamics and to evaluate issues related to model coupling and error/prediction limits.</p><p>The study is carried out in the framework of the European Project H2020 "ODYSSEA" (Operating a network of integrated observatory systems in the Mediterranean SEA, http://odysseaplatform.eu/), with the final goal to build an on-line forecasting modeling system of the Northern Adriatic Sea.</p>

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marco Zavatarelli ◽  
Isabella Scroccaro ◽  
Tomas Lovato

<p>In the framework of the European Project H2020 "ODYSSEA" (Operating a network of integrated observatory systems in the Mediterranean SEA, http://odysseaplatform.eu/) a forecasting modeling system of the coupled physical and biogeochemical conditions of the Northern Adriatic Sea is under development.</p><p>The modeling system consists of the on-line coupling of the European general circulation model - NEMO (Nucleus for European Modeling of the Ocean, https://www.nemo-ocean.eu/), with the marine biogeochemical model - BFM (Biogeochemical Flux Model, bfm-community.eu/).<br>The biogeochemical component of the model includes the simulation of the biogeochemical processes of both water column and sediments and their coupling. The model is run for the first time in the Northern Adriatic Sea with an explicit benthic-pelagic coupling.</p><p>The horizontal spatial discretization is defined by a rectangular grid of 315 × 278 cells, having a horizontal resolution of about 800 m. The vertical resolution is defined at 2 m, with 48 z-levels regularly spaced. Currently the atmospheric forcing are the ECMWF 6hr analysis atmospheric fields. The river supplies of fresh water and nutrient salts consider the daily runoff of the Po river, while the other rivers within the study area are included as climatological values. The open boundary conditions of the modeling system come from the Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service (CMEMS, http://marine.copernicus.eu/).</p><p>In this work, the hindcast simulations encompassing the period 2000 – 2009 are validated against available observations from in situ and satellite platforms for sea surface temperature, chlorophyll-a and dissolved inorganic nutrients and, in order to evaluate the impact of a resolved benthic biogeochemical dynamics,  compared against simulations results obtained utilising a simple benthic closure parameterisation.</p>


2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 1423-1445 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gianpiero Cossarini ◽  
Stefano Querin ◽  
Cosimo Solidoro ◽  
Gianmaria Sannino ◽  
Paolo Lazzari ◽  
...  

Abstract. In this paper, we present a coupling scheme between the Massachusetts Institute of Technology general circulation model (MITgcm) and the Biogeochemical Flux Model (BFM). The MITgcm and BFM are widely used models for geophysical fluid dynamics and for ocean biogeochemistry, respectively, and they benefit from the support of active developers and user communities. The MITgcm is a state-of-the-art general circulation model for simulating the ocean and the atmosphere. This model is fully 3-D (including the non-hydrostatic term of momentum equations) and is characterized by a finite-volume discretization and a number of additional features enabling simulations from global (O(107) m) to local scales (O(100) m). The BFM is a biogeochemical model based on plankton functional type formulations, and it simulates the cycling of a number of constituents and nutrients within marine ecosystems. The online coupling presented in this paper is based on an open-source code, and it is characterized by a modular structure. Modularity preserves the potentials of the two models, allowing for a sustainable programming effort to handle future evolutions in the two codes. We also tested specific model options and integration schemes to balance the numerical accuracy against the computational performance. The coupling scheme allows us to solve several processes that are not considered by each of the models alone, including light attenuation parameterizations along the water column, phytoplankton and detritus sinking, external inputs, and surface and bottom fluxes. Moreover, this new coupled hydrodynamic–biogeochemical model has been configured and tested against an idealized problem (a cyclonic gyre in a mid-latitude closed basin) and a realistic case study (central part of the Mediterranean Sea in 2006–2012). The numerical results consistently reproduce the interplay of hydrodynamics and biogeochemistry in both the idealized case and Mediterranean Sea experiments. The former reproduces correctly the alternation of surface bloom and deep chlorophyll maximum dynamics driven by the seasonal cycle of winter vertical mixing and summer stratification; the latter simulates the main basin-wide and mesoscale spatial features of the physical and biochemical variables in the Mediterranean, thus demonstrating the applicability of the new coupled model to a wide range of ocean biogeochemistry problems.


2017 ◽  
Vol 51 (31-32) ◽  
pp. 1795-1834 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eduardo Suárez-Morales ◽  
Alenka Goruppi ◽  
Alessandra de Olazabal ◽  
Valentina Tirelli

2013 ◽  
Vol 13 (6) ◽  
pp. 1567-1577 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Sanna ◽  
P. Lionello ◽  
S. Gualdi

Abstract. In this study we investigate the importance of an eddy-permitting Mediterranean Sea circulation model on the simulation of atmospheric cyclones and precipitation in a climate model. This is done by analyzing results of two fully coupled GCM (general circulation models) simulations, differing only for the presence/absence of an interactive marine module, at very high-resolution (~ 1/16°), for the simulation of the 3-D circulation of the Mediterranean Sea. Cyclones are tracked by applying an objective Lagrangian algorithm to the MSLP (mean sea level pressure) field. On annual basis, we find a statistically significant difference in vast cyclogenesis regions (northern Adriatic, Sirte Gulf, Aegean Sea and southern Turkey) and in lifetime, giving evidence of the effect of both land–sea contrast and surface heat flux intensity and spatial distribution on cyclone characteristics. Moreover, annual mean convective precipitation changes significantly in the two model climatologies as a consequence of differences in both air–sea interaction strength and frequency of cyclogenesis in the two analyzed simulations.


2014 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 569 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. A. CUESTA ◽  
N. BETTOSO ◽  
G. COMISSO ◽  
C. FROGLIA ◽  
G. MAZZA ◽  
...  

The capture of larvae of Palaemon macrodactylus off Mallorca (Balearic Islands) has been recently reported as evidence of a potential presence of a population of this species in the Mediterranean Sea. Photos of this species, taken during dives in the Sacca di Goro (northern Adriatic) were published in the same year, but no specimen could be collected at that time. Herein we report the capture in 2013 of numerous individuals of the oriental shrimp, including ovigerous females, both in the Sacca di Goro and in the Lagoon of Marano and Grado (northern Adriatic Sea, Italy), confirming the existence of a well-established population of this species in the Mediterranean Sea.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valentina Turk ◽  
Nina Bednarsek ◽  
Jadran Faganeli ◽  
Blaženka Gasparovic ◽  
Michele Giani ◽  
...  

<p>Although the marginal seas represent only 7% of the total ocean area, the CO<sub>2</sub> fluxes are intensive and important for the carbon budget, exposing to an intense process of anthropogenic ocean acidification (OA). A decline in pH, especially in the estuarine waters, results also from the eutrophication-induced acidification. The Adriatic Sea is currently a CO<sub>2 </sub>sink with an annual flux of approximately -1.2 to -3 mol C m<sup>-2</sup> yr<sup>-1</sup> which is twice as low compared to the net sink rates in the NW Mediterranean (-4 to -5 mol C m<sup>-2</sup> yr<sup>-1</sup>). Based on the comparison of two winter cruises carried out in in the 25-year interval between 1983 and 2008, acidification rate of 0.003 pH<sub>T</sub> units yr<sup>−1</sup> was estimated in the northern Adriatic which is similar to the Mediterranean open waters (with recent estimations of −0.0028 ± 0.0003 units pH<sub>T</sub> yr<sup>−1</sup>) and the surface coastal waters (-0.003 ± 0.001 and -0.0044 ± 0.00006 pH<sub>T</sub> units yr<sup>−1</sup>). The computed Revelle factor for the Adriatic Sea, with the value of about 10, indicates that the buffer capacity is rather high and that the waters should not be particularly exposed to acidification. Total alkalinity (TA) in the Adriatic (2.6-2.7 mM) is in the upper range of TA measured in the Mediterranean Sea because riverine inputs transport carbonates dissolved from the Alpine dolomites and karstic watersheds. The Adriatic Sea is the second sub-basin (319 Gmol yr<sup>-1</sup>), following the Aegean Sea (which receives the TA contribution from the Black Sea), that contribute to the riverine TA discharges into the Mediterranean Sea. About 60% of the TA inflow into the Adriatic Sea is attributed to the Po river discharge with TA of ~3 mM and TA decreases with increasing salinity. Saturation state indicates that the waters of the Adriatic are supersaturated with respect to calcite (Ω<sub>Ca</sub>) and aragonite (Ω<sub>Ar</sub>) throughout the year. However, saturation states are considerably lower in the bottom water layers, due to the prevalence of benthic remineralization processes in the stratification period. The seasonal changes of the chemical and environmental conditions and relatively small size of the Adriatic Sea area the microbial community composition, function (growth, enzymatic activity) and carbon and nitrogen biogeochemical cycles. Significant effects on calcifying organisms and phytoplankton are expected while the effects of possible OA on microbially-driven processes are not known yet.</p>


2011 ◽  
Vol 78 (4) ◽  
pp. 517-523
Author(s):  
M. Martinelli ◽  
F. Betti ◽  
C. Di Camillo ◽  
S. Puce ◽  
G. Bavestrello

2002 ◽  
Vol 18 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 75-84 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rosabruna La Ferla ◽  
Renata Zaccone ◽  
Maurizio Azzaro ◽  
Gabriella Caruso

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valeria Di Biagio ◽  
Gianpiero Cossarini ◽  
Stefano Salon ◽  
Cosimo Solidoro

Abstract. We propose a new method to identify and characterise the occurrence of prolonged extreme events in marine ecosystems on the basin scale. There is a growing interest about events that can affect ecosystem functions and services in a changing climate. Our method identifies extreme events as peak occurrences over 99th percentile thresholds computed from local time series and defines an Extreme Events Wave (EEW) as a connected region including these events. The EEWs are characterised by a set of novel indexes, referred to initiation, extent, duration and strength. The indexes, associated to the areas covered by each EEW, are then statistically analysed to highlight the main features of the EEWs on the considered domain. We applied the method to the winter-spring daily chlorophyll field of a validated multidecadal hindcast provided by a coupled hydrodynamic-biogeochemical model of the Mediterranean open-sea ecosystem, with 1/12° horizontal resolution. This allowed to identify the maxima of chlorophyll as exceptionally high and prolonged blooms and to characterise their phenomenology in the period 1994–2012. A fuzzy k-means cluster analysis on the EEWs indexes provided a bio-regionalisation of the Mediterranean Sea associated to the occurrence of chlorophyll EEWs with different regimes.


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