| Within the WW-Medatlas project, sponsored by the Italian, French and Greek
Navies, an extensive atlas of the wind and wave conditions in the
Mediterranean Sea has been completed. The atlas is based on the information
derived from the archive of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather
Forecasts, UK, then calibrated on the base of the data available from the
ERS1-2 and Topex satellites. The calibration is required because the wind,
hence the wave, data are normally strongly underestimated in the enclosed
seas. The calibration has been done deriving the model values at each
satellite position, typically at 7 km intervals. The co-located values have
then been assigned to the closest grid point. This has provided a substantial
number of couples of data at each point, then used to derive, by best-fitting
technique, the correction required. This turns out to vary amply throughout
the basin, according to the local geometry and orography. The calibration
coefficients, different for wind and waves, have been used to correct the
original fields and the time series at the single points. Using the
calibrated data, extensive statistics have been derived, both as fields and
at each point, including extreme values. |