MIÉRCOLES 14/8 a las 14hs *Horario especial*
*** Presencial: Sala de reuniones (of 2308 edificio 0+inf) ******

Multiplatform measurements to study ocean meso‐submesoscale dynamics
Dra. Maristella Berta (Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche- Istituto di Scienze Marine (CNR-ISMAR), Lerici (SP), Italy)

The dynamics of the ocean currents and fronts result from the interaction of simultaneous mechanisms at different scales. Large and mesoscale oceanic features (10 to 100 km, days to weeks) are globally monitored through satellite remote sensing, but the submesoscale range (a few hundred meters to 10 km, hours to a few days) remains particularly challenging to observe directly, due to the high variability in both time and space.
The development of multiplatform ocean observatories spanning the sea surface as well as the water column and the combination of independent and complementary measurements collected in targeted experiments is crucial to accurately resolve localized regions of ocean mixing and enhanced vertical velocities, such as fronts.
Meso-submesoscale fronts and filaments have been recognized to play an important role in the surface dispersion and patchiness of various types of tracers (biological, pollutants and marine debris) as well as in the transfer from the surface to the interior ocean.
Research efforts are put into the networking of multidisciplinary observing systems, on the optimization of multiplatform experiment strategies, and on the development of methods to blend multiplatform observations in order to reconstruct the 4‐D circulation and the current-driven passive transport. No less important is the development of metrics to unravel submesoscale properties, to estimate vertical velocities within the sea surface layer, and the response of sea properties to atmospheric forcing. The talk will introduce the subject and discuss some recent applications in the framework of different international scientific collaborations.

Maristella Berta holds a Master in Environmental Physics (Univ. of Torino, Italy) and a PhD in Environmental and Industrial Fluid Mechanics at the Univ. of Triesten (Italy). Her interests are mainly devoted to the reconstruction of the 3D ocean current dynamics and to the combination of sea observations coming from complementary instruments and approaches. The developed techniques and metrics are applied to the investigation of meso and submesoscale dynamics through the analysis of targeted Lagrangian observations in combination with Eulerian and modeled data. She participated and coordinated several Lagrangian experiments and coordinated an international multiplatform experiment in the Mediterranean Sea.