Implementation and Validation of the ISMAR High-Frequency Coastal Radar Network in the Gulf of Manfredonia (Mediterranean Sea)

Abstract

In this paper, a high-frequency (HF) coastal radar network is described, which is established and maintained by the Institute of Marine Sciences (ISMAR) of the National Research Council of Italy (CNR) for the measurement of surface current velocities in the Gulf of Manfredonia, located in the semienclosed Adriatic Sea (Mediterranean Sea), during 2013-2015. The network consisted of four HF radars (HFRs) that provided hourly sea surface velocity data in real-time mode in a netCDF format compliant to the Climate and Forecast Metadata Conventions CF-1.6 and the INSPIRE directive. The hourly netCDF files are disseminated via a Thematic Real-time Environmental Distributed Data Services catalog supporting OGC compliant distributions and protocols for data visualization, metadata interrogation, and data download. HFR velocity data were compared with in situ velocity measurements by Global Positioning System tracked surface drifters deployed within the radar footprint. The results show a good agreement, with the root mean square (rms) of the difference between radial velocities from HFR and drifters ranging between 20% and 50% of the drifter velocity rms. The HFR data have also been compared with subsurface velocity profiles from an upward looking acoustic Doppler current profiler (ADCP) during winter 2015, to gain information on the correlation between surface and water column velocities. This information is especially relevant for fishery and coastal management applications, where transport of

An Analysis of Surface Ocean Currents from HF Radar Measurements in the Bali Strait and the Flores Sea, Indonesia

“…Several references have compared the HF Radar data output with other observation devices, such as the buoy device by Tian et al [38], which obtained the RMSE range of [11; 13] cm/s. The use of a drifter set by Corgnati et al [39] obtained the RMSE range of [10; 22] cm/s, and the current meter commonly installed in the hull by Cosoli and de Vos [12] obtained a range of [17.4; 33.6] cm/s. From the comparison, it can be seen that the use of various observation devices tends to produce different measurements, such as the difference in the time interval for data collection [40].…”

Coastal HF radars in the Mediterranean: Applications in support of science priorities and societal needs

“…Physical allogenic factors are determinant in driving dilution and species advection of coastal phytoplankton, during the offshore 'blue' phase. This marked alternation between coastal and offshore water masses acts to promote phytoplankton The GoM is a well-known recruitment area in the Adriatic Sea (Sciascia et al, 2018;Corgnati et al, 2019a). In this region, HFRs have been used to understand the role of ocean currents in the recruitment of small pelagic fishes (i.e.…”

The Global High Frequency Radar Network

“…Of course, the NRT validation should not substitute the traditional offline validation practices (performed at delayed-mode system), but it complements it. The most common delayed-mode validation of HFR currents performed so far are based on comparison with drifter trajectories and point-wise current meters and ADCPs located in the HFR footprint along with self-consistency checks at the midpoint of the overwater baseline (Lorente et al, 2014;Kalampokis et al, 2016;Corgnati et al, 2018a;Cosoli et al, 2018). Equally, a variety of validation exercises of HFR-derived wave measurements against in situ observations have been previously conducted (Atan et al, 2015;Gómez et al, 2015) in order to infer the accuracy of HFR remote-sensed estimations and quantify the uncertainties related to this technology.…”