Semi enclosed basin monitoring and analysis of meteo, wave, tide and current data: Sea monitoring

Abstract

The present paper aims to show and discuss the long term and continuous recordings of both meteorological and hydrodynamic data collected in a semi enclosed sea. The site in question is composed by the Mar Grande and Mar Piccolo basins (Southern Italy), which are mutually connected. In turn, the Mar Grande is joined to the Ionian Sea by means of two openings. Therefore, the system shows features typical of a lagunar environment, which is also affected by coastal heavy industry and anthropic pressure, thus being highly vulnerable. A monitoring of its hydrodynamics could be useful, allowing both to check the real-time status of the basin and promptly intervene when accidents occur and to create a dataset necessary to calibrate and validate modelling systems providing forecasts. To this, in the framework of the Italian flagship Project RITMARE, a meteo-oceanographic station, a wave-current meter and a tide gauge have been installed in the area, since December 2013. In detail, measurements of wind, waves, tides and current profiles, are acquired on site with different sampling frequencies and are transmitted on a web cloud by a router 3G, where they are stored, thus being available for download by remote users. The data acquisition and processing is managed by the research group of the Department of Civil, Environmental, Building, Engineering and Chemistry (Technical University of Bari). All the acquired data are archived in monthly time-series, examined and discussed. The analysis of currents is made in two different measuring stations for the whole year 2015, as well as the analysis of wave data. On the contrary, tide data have been assessing only recently, since August 2015. Comparisons with available recordings of the year 2014 are examined. Also spatial and temporal correlations of both waves and currents are discussed. Finally, tidal trends are shown, consistent with current inversions.