Abstract. An updated climatology, based on a comprehensive data set (1911–2009) of temperature, salinity and dissolved oxygen, has been produced for the whole Adriatic Sea with the variational inverse method using the DIVA (Data-Interpolating Variational Analysis) software. Climatological maps were produced at 26 levels and validated with ordinary cross-validation and with a real vs. synthetic temperature–salinity diagram intercomparison. The concept of climatology–observation misfit (COM) has been introduced as an estimate of the physical variability associated with the climatological structures. In order to verify the temporal stability of the climatology, long-term variability has been investigated in the Middle Adriatic and the South Adriatic pits, regarded as the most suitable records of possible long-term changes. Compared with previous climatologies, this study allows a clear identification of the seasonal dynamic of the southern Adriatic, where a clear oxygen minimum is typically observed in the centre of the South Adriatic Gyre. New and better resolved features emerged from this analysis: (1) below 100 m all properties profoundly differ between the central and the southern Adriatic and seem characterized by different biogeochemical dynamics; (2) the South Adriatic Pit clearly shows the remote effects of the Eastern Mediterranean Transient, while no effect is observed in the Middle Adriatic Pit; (3) the deepest part of the southern Adriatic seems now to be significantly saltier (+0.18 psu since the period 1910–1914, with an increase of +0.018 decade−1 since the late 1940s) and warmer (+0.54 °C since 1910–1914) even though a long-term temperature trend could not be statistically demonstrated; (4) the Middle Adriatic Pit shows a long-term increase in apparent oxygen utilization (+0.77 mL L−1 since 1910–1914, with a constant increase of +0.2 mL L−1 decade−1 after the 1970s).

No abstract

No abstract

Sensor engineering is continuously evolving as devices become cheaper, smaller, more intelligent, and more efficient. Today, oceanographic sensors aim at monitoring marine processes by means of physical, chemical, and biological variables, and use different data formats, units, parameters, resolutions, data quality standards, and protocols. Therefore, integration and interoperability at European level represent a challenge. To cope with this challenge, the Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) standards, developed by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), are a good solution, as they ensure interoperability and long-term archiving of data series with complete information for all devices. The interoperability allows integrating information from different sources or pre-existing architectures, such as those developed in the SANY project (http://www.opengeospatial.org/ogc/regions/SANY) or by the US Integrated Ocean Observing System (https://github.com/ioos). In this paper, we illustrate the real-time data management system, developed by the Italian National Oceanographic Data Centre (NODC) at the Istituto Nazionale di Oceanografia e di Geofisica Sperimentale, OGS in Trieste -Italy, designed to share data acquired by a large number of heterogeneous observing platforms. This system adopts Observations and Measurements (O&M) and Sensor Model Language (SensorML) as data and metadata formats, as well as the Sensor Observation Service (SOS) released by the 52°North as server and Web client for open data access. The work done shows that the choice to manage real-time data using OGC Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) standards can be considered a valid solution with pros and cons. Nevertheless, in the future, the SWE community will grow, and with it, the number of applications to manage SWE standards to simplify their adoption.

No abstract