MFSTEP starts

The Mediterranean ocean Forecasting System Toward Environmental Predictions targets to start on 1st March 2003. The kickoff meeting is being held in Bologna from 19-21st March. Full story inside.

The Mediterranean ocean Forecasting System: Toward Environmental Predictions (MFSTEP) project is a continuation of the Mediterranean Forecasting System Pilot Project (MFSPP). One of the goals of MFSTEP is to advance the monitoring technology to achieve maximum reliability of the observing system. In MFSTEP the observing system component will build upon the experience of the initial Observing System for the World Ocean. It consists of: a Voluntary Observing Ship (VOS) system with innovative technology to be real time, cost-effective, multidisciplinary and environmentally safe; a moored buoy system designed to serve real time validation of the basin scale models and the calibration of the ecosystem modelling components; a satellite real time data analysis system using several available and soon to be available satellite observations of the sea surface topography, temperature and colour; a high space-time resolution network of autonomous subsurface profiling floats (Array for Real-Time Geostrophic Oceanography-ARGO); a basin scale glider autonomous vehicle experiment; an Observing System Simulation Experiment (OSSE) activity; and a real time data management and delayed mode archiving system.

The aim is to improve monitoring technology to achieve maximum reliability, to demonstrate the feasibility of regional scale forecasting in several Mediterranean areas, to develop biochemical modelling and data assimilation towards environmental predictions and to start the development of end-user interfaces for the exploitation of the project products. The problems addressed are: technological developments for real time monitoring, the provision of protocols for data dissemination, including telecommunication and quality control; scientific development to improve numerical models, the design and implementation of data assimilation schemes at different spatial scales, the ecosystem modeling validation/calibration at the coastal and basin scales and the development of data assimilation techniques for biochemical data; exploitation developments, consisting of software interfaces between forecast products and oil spill modeling, general contaminant dispersion models, relocatable emergency systems, search and rescue models and fish stock observing systems.