Toward Marine Environrnental Predictions in the Mediterranean Sea Coastal Areas
347
b)
Fig. 17.3 (continued).
7) All sedimentary processes and material fluxes from the coastal areas to the deep
ocean are a complex interaction of local etfects and remote forcing from the
deep basin currents. In the Mediterranean Sea canyons are believed to be the
site of these important carbon exchange mechanisms (DeMadron, 1994).
The importance of the interaction between the shelf and open ocean areas forces
us to take a precise observational and mode ling strategy that tries to develop both
the large scale and shelf/coastal scales systems together. The system components
will be described in the section that follows.
17.3 The coastal environmental predictions system
Any geophysical prediction problem has inherent scales of unpredictability connected to the nonlinearity ofthe dynamical equations and the errors in the knowledge of the initial conditions over the domain of interest. The cIassical problem of
predictability for the atmosphere has been studied first by Lorenz (1963) and reexamined later by Farrell (1988) and Farrell and Moore (1992) for the ocean. The
intrinsic nonlinearity of the hydrodynamic equations and physical parameterizations amplifies the errors in the initial conditions so that approximately after few
days the difference between the forecasted fields and the observations is not ditfer-
347
b)
Fig. 17.3 (continued).
7) All sedimentary processes and material fluxes from the coastal areas to the deep
ocean are a complex interaction of local etfects and remote forcing from the
deep basin currents. In the Mediterranean Sea canyons are believed to be the
site of these important carbon exchange mechanisms (DeMadron, 1994).
The importance of the interaction between the shelf and open ocean areas forces
us to take a precise observational and mode ling strategy that tries to develop both
the large scale and shelf/coastal scales systems together. The system components
will be described in the section that follows.
17.3 The coastal environmental predictions system
Any geophysical prediction problem has inherent scales of unpredictability connected to the nonlinearity ofthe dynamical equations and the errors in the knowledge of the initial conditions over the domain of interest. The cIassical problem of
predictability for the atmosphere has been studied first by Lorenz (1963) and reexamined later by Farrell (1988) and Farrell and Moore (1992) for the ocean. The
intrinsic nonlinearity of the hydrodynamic equations and physical parameterizations amplifies the errors in the initial conditions so that approximately after few
days the difference between the forecasted fields and the observations is not ditfer-