THE MEDITERRANEAN, A SMALL-SCALE LABORATORY

CLIMATE AND OCEANIC WEATHER

In order to understand the planet’s weather, it is fundamental to get to know about the interactions between atmosphere and ocean, which act on multiple spatial and temporal scales, giving rise to different meteorological, oceanographic and climactic phenomena.

In the same way that there is atmospheric weather, with fronts, anticyclones and depressions, in the sea we have oceanic weather, which features fronts and anticyclonic and cyclonic eddies.

MEDCLIC focuses its research on profiling and understanding ocean weather in the Mediterranean Sea.  Being a small-scale ocean, makes it easier to research complex phenomena linked to the instability of marine currents and the formation of eddies (which is known as mesoscale variability).  Recent technological advances have shown that these processes, forming cyclonic and anticyclonic eddies, exist in all our oceans and have a direct impact on the climate and marine ecosystems.

Specifically, we focus our research on areas of special scientific interest in the Western Mediterranean, such as the Ibiza Channel, the Lyon Gulf, the Alboran Sea and the Algerian Basin.

Therefore, projects like MEDCLIC allow us to further our knowledge about the processes taking place in the Mediterranean at mesoscale, which are key pieces in the complex puzzle that is our oceans’ behaviour.

Discover the Mediterranean Sea and have a look at our outreach material.