5 European Semi-enclosed Seas
171
5.4 Concluding Remarks
Recent developments in oceanography are characterized by an intertwining of research carried out in the fields of observations and of numerical simulations. This
trend influenced the present review, which, although dealing with numerical modelling, considered other aspects of theory and observations. This is a quite natural
choice by the authors, which is consistent with the present-day needs requiring using models not only as tools to develop conceptual knowledge, but also as tools to
solve practical problems. This can only happen if models are sufficiently validated
against observations and some of the presented results showed how close or how far
these two research fields are from another.
It is difficult to find worldwide regional-ocean areas with so long traditions in
oceanography, so many and profound research contributions and so many past and
present activities in numerical modelling as the three seas addressed above. Nevertheless some important problems are waiting for progress to come. One of the
expected developments in the near future is in bringing together up-to-date-research
in straits’ dynamics, gravity currents and cascading, as well as mixing in the ocean
interior and at the bottom. All these aspects need the development of further modelling capabilities with unstructured and adaptive grids, and corresponding efforts
consistent with new data emerging from radars, gliders and other sources of information using new observational technologies.
There are many exciting issues of basic research interest which have not been
dealt with in this paper; one of them is biogeochemistry and ecosystem modelling.
In this field, European semi-enclosed seas with their rich variety present perfect
laboratories to develop and test new advances.
Another important direction of recent research, which has not been addressed
in the present paper, is associated with data assimilation and operational oceanography. Bringing data and modelling together using dedicated analysis and statistical techniques, has proven to be very productive. One example is the Europewide research cooperation in the field of operational oceanography framed under
the MyOcean-2 (http://www.myocean.eu.org/) activities. The research supporting
operational oceanography develops capabilities to estimate the errors associated
with model predictions, something bringing numerical modelling and observations
in synergetic co-existence. We hope that further reviews addressing the physical
systems of European semi-enclosed seas will deal not only with the dynamics of
geophysical fields but also with the dynamics of the associated error propagation.
In this review we tried to gather the presented results under the concept of straits
and bottom outflow dominated dynamics. This aspect has not been consistently addressed in the past when using numerical modelling as a research tool. We do not
pretend to have been able to make a big step in this direction, but will be happy if
the reader starts to think of the basins presented in this paper as physical systems
dominated by bottom flows.
Acknowledgements We thank all co-authors of our past research for supporting our initiative to
write this review and in particular J.-M. Beckers for his extensive comments. The second author
was supported by the European Commission’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7 2007–2013)
171
5.4 Concluding Remarks
Recent developments in oceanography are characterized by an intertwining of research carried out in the fields of observations and of numerical simulations. This
trend influenced the present review, which, although dealing with numerical modelling, considered other aspects of theory and observations. This is a quite natural
choice by the authors, which is consistent with the present-day needs requiring using models not only as tools to develop conceptual knowledge, but also as tools to
solve practical problems. This can only happen if models are sufficiently validated
against observations and some of the presented results showed how close or how far
these two research fields are from another.
It is difficult to find worldwide regional-ocean areas with so long traditions in
oceanography, so many and profound research contributions and so many past and
present activities in numerical modelling as the three seas addressed above. Nevertheless some important problems are waiting for progress to come. One of the
expected developments in the near future is in bringing together up-to-date-research
in straits’ dynamics, gravity currents and cascading, as well as mixing in the ocean
interior and at the bottom. All these aspects need the development of further modelling capabilities with unstructured and adaptive grids, and corresponding efforts
consistent with new data emerging from radars, gliders and other sources of information using new observational technologies.
There are many exciting issues of basic research interest which have not been
dealt with in this paper; one of them is biogeochemistry and ecosystem modelling.
In this field, European semi-enclosed seas with their rich variety present perfect
laboratories to develop and test new advances.
Another important direction of recent research, which has not been addressed
in the present paper, is associated with data assimilation and operational oceanography. Bringing data and modelling together using dedicated analysis and statistical techniques, has proven to be very productive. One example is the Europewide research cooperation in the field of operational oceanography framed under
the MyOcean-2 (http://www.myocean.eu.org/) activities. The research supporting
operational oceanography develops capabilities to estimate the errors associated
with model predictions, something bringing numerical modelling and observations
in synergetic co-existence. We hope that further reviews addressing the physical
systems of European semi-enclosed seas will deal not only with the dynamics of
geophysical fields but also with the dynamics of the associated error propagation.
In this review we tried to gather the presented results under the concept of straits
and bottom outflow dominated dynamics. This aspect has not been consistently addressed in the past when using numerical modelling as a research tool. We do not
pretend to have been able to make a big step in this direction, but will be happy if
the reader starts to think of the basins presented in this paper as physical systems
dominated by bottom flows.
Acknowledgements We thank all co-authors of our past research for supporting our initiative to
write this review and in particular J.-M. Beckers for his extensive comments. The second author
was supported by the European Commission’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7 2007–2013)