A long-term time series of high-frequency sampled sea-level data collected in the port of Genoa were analyzed to detect the occurrence of meteotsunami events and to characterize them. Time-frequency analysis showed well-developed energy peaks on a 26–30 minute band, which are an almost permanent feature in the analyzed signal. The amplitude of these waves is generally few centimeters but, in some cases, they can reach values comparable or even greater than the local tidal elevation. In the perspective of sea-level rise, their assessment can be relevant for sound coastal work planning and port management. Events having the highest energy were selected for detailed analysis and the main features were identified and characterized by means of wavelet transform. The most important one occurred on 14 October 2016, when the oscillations, generated by an abrupt jump in the atmospheric pressure, achieved a maximum wave height of 50 cm and lasted for about three hours.

Accurate measurement of temperature and salinity is a fundamental task with heavy implications in all the possible applications of the currently available datasets, for example, in the study of climate changes and modeling of ocean dynamics. In this work, the reliability of measurements obtained by oceanographic devices (eXpendable BathyThermographs, Argo floats and Conductivity-Temperature-Depth sensors) is analyzed by means of an intercomparison exercise. As a first step, temperature profiles from XBT probes, deployed by commercial ships crossing the Ligurian and Tyrrhenian seas during the Ship of Opportunity Program (SOOP), were matched with profiles from Argo floats quasi-collocated in space and time. Attention was then paid to temperature/salinity profiling Argo floats. Since Argo floats usually are not recovered and should last up to five years without any re-calibration, their onboard sensors may suffer some drift and/or offset. In the literature, refined methods were developed to post-process Argo data, in order to correct the response of their profiling CTD sensors, in particular adjusting the salinity drift. The core of this delayed-mode quality control is the comparison of Argo data with reference climatology. At the same time, the experimental comparison of Argo profiles with ship-based CTD profiles, matched in space and time, is still of great importance. Therefore, an overall comparison of Argo floats vs. shipboard CTDs was performed, in terms of temperature and salinity profiles in the whole Mediterranean Sea, under space-time matching conditions as strict as possible. Performed analyses provided interesting results. XBT profiles confirmed that below 100 m depth the accordance with Argo data is reasonably good, with a small positive bias (close to 0.05 °C) and a standard deviation equal to about 0.10 °C. Similarly, side-by-side comparisons vs. CTD profiles confirmed the good quality of Argo measurements; the evidence of a drift in time was found, but at a level of about E−05 unit/day, so being reasonably negligible on the Argo time-scale. XBT, Argo and CTD users are therefore encouraged to take into account these results as a good indicator of the uncertainties associated with such devices in the Mediterranean Sea, for the analyzed period, in all the climatological applications.

Satellite altimetry data from X-TRACK products were analyzed for an overall assessment of their capability to detect coastal sea level variability in the Ligurian Sea. Near-coastal altimetry data, collected from 2009 to 2016 along track n.044, were compared with simultaneous high frequency sampled data at the tidal station in Genoa (NW Mediterranean Sea). The two time series show a very good agreement: correlation between total sea level elevation from the altimeter and sea level variation from the tidal gauge is 0.92 and root mean square difference is 4.5 cm. Some relevant mismatches can be ascribed to the local high frequency coastal variability due to shelf and harbor oscillation detected at the tidal station, which might not be observed at the location of the altimetry points of measurement. The analysis evidences discrepancies (root mean square difference of 4.7 cm) between model results for open sea tides and harmonic analysis at the tidal station, mainly occurring at the annual and semiannual period. On the contrary, the important part of dynamic atmospheric correction due to the inverse barometer effect, well agrees with that computed at the tidal station.

This paper deals with the problem of the rigorous determination of a marine boundary line between two or more countries, both from the theoretical and the algorithmic point of view. Through suitable simplifications, also the problem of the determination of the territorial limit is discussed and solved. Both the applications above are surely important from the geomatic and geo-political point of view, also outside the peculiar problems relevant to the marine environment.

No abstract