This study shows the influence of the Western Alboran circulation on the composition of the outflow through the Strait of Gibraltar, which is mainly composed by intermediate and Deep Mediterranean Water. While the effect of the gyre in the deep water proportion was already reported, the effect on the intermediate flow has not been addressed yet. The size of the gyre was compared with the characteristic of the outflow in the strait. Results show the intermediate flow benefits from a weak gyre. Hide

In this paper we used sediment samples from the shelf and upper/middle slope off south-eastern Brazil in order to recognise the inorganic and organic signatures of the main current systems acting in the area. It was possible to identify the extension of the contribution of terrigenous sediments from the adjacent continent as well as to recognise the different geochemical signatures related to the Brazil Current, Intermediate Western Boundary Current and Deep Western Boundary Current. Hide

In this work we investigate the capability of the Argo array in the Mediterranean Sea to capture mesoscale circulation structures (diameter of around 150 km). To do that we conduct several experiments to simulate different spatial sampling configurations of the Argo array in the basin. Results show that the actual Argo array in the Mediterranean (2° × 2°) might be enlarged until a spatial resolution of nearly 75 × 75 km (450 floats) in order to capture the mesoscale signal. Hide

A numerical ocean circulation model has been employed to explore the sensitivity of the forecast skill of mixed-layer properties to the initial conditions, boundary conditions, and vertical mixing parameterisations. All forecasts were validated against observations which were taken in June 2014 to the west of Sardinia. Hide

We observed oceanographic and community data from October 2013 to November 2014 in the shallow waters of Kongsfjorden on the western coast of Svalbard (Norway) using remote controlled hydrographic and optic sensors. Daily vertical profiles of temperature, salinity, and turbidity were sampled together with stereo images of the macrobiotic community, including fish. A distinct seasonal cycle in total species abundances was found with surprisingly high animal counts during the polar winter. Hide

An ocean glider was tested during the REP14-MED experiment off the western coast of the island of Sardinia as a platform for recording sounds produced by whales and dolphins using two sensors. Sperm whale clicks as well as dolphin clicks and whistles were identified in the recordings. Automatically detected sperm whale clicks were used to estimate animal tracks. Such information is useful for marine mammal density estimation studies that use passive acoustics. Hide

Reduction of wave forecasting errors is a challenge, especially in dynamically complicated coastal ocean areas such as the southern part of the North Sea area. We study the effects of coupling between an atmospheric and two nested-grid wind wave models. Comparisons with data from in situ and satellite altimeter observations indicate that two-way coupling improves the simulation of wind and wave parameters of the model and justifies its implementation for both operational and climate simulation. Hide

Three machine learning models were investigated for the reconstruction of global surface ocean CO₂ concentration. They include self-organizing maps (SOMs), feedforward neural networks (FNNs), and support vector machines (SVMs). Our results show that the SVM performs the best, the FNN the second, and the SOM the worst. While the SOM does not have over-fitting problems, it is sensitive to data scaling and its discrete interpolation may not be good for some applications. Hide

To the west of Britain and Ireland, a strong ocean current follows the steep slope that separates the deep Atlantic and the continental shelf. This “Slope Current” exerts an Atlantic influence on the North Sea and its ecosystems. Using a combination of computer modelling and archived data, we find that the Slope Current weakened over 1988–2007, reducing Atlantic influence on the North Sea, due to a combination of warming of the subpolar North Atlantic and weakening winds to the west of Scotland. Hide

We investigated how the largest seabird of the North Atlantic, the northern gannet, uses the southern North Sea as its habitat to search for food. We deployed small GPS trackers on the birds that recorded the birds' movements in detail. Birds were away from the breeding colony mostly for 1–15 h and up to 80 km distance to find prey for their chicks and themselves. To obtain food, they dove frequently to depths of 1–3 m, with a maximum of 11 m. Hide

We use data collected in 2014 to show that the outflow of nutrient-rich water occurs much further to the west than has been reported in the past. We suggest that this is due to much less summer sea-ice coverage in the northwestern East Siberian Sea than in the past decades. Further, our data support a more complicated flow pattern in the region where the Mendeleev Ridge reaches the shelf compared to the general cyclonic circulation within the individual basins as suggested historically. Hide