Predictability of extreme meteo‐oceanographic events in the Adriatic Sea

The performance of state‐of‐the‐art meteorological and oceanographic numerical systems in predicting the sea state in the Adriatic Sea during intense storms is assessed. Two major storms that affected Venice are discussed. The first storm occurred on 4 November 1966, when Venice suffered its most dr...

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Published inQuarterly journal of the Royal Meteorological Society Vol. 136; no. 647; pp. 400 - 413
Main Authors Cavaleri, L., Bertotti, L., Buizza, R., Buzzi, A., Masato, V., Umgiesser, G., Zampieri, M.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Chichester, UK John Wiley & Sons, Ltd 01.01.2010
Wiley
Subjects
Adriatic Sea
Damage
downscaling
Earth, ocean, space
Exact sciences and technology
External geophysics
Floods
historical storms
Marine
Mathematical models
meteorological modelling
Meteorology
Physics of the high neutral atmosphere
Sea states
State of the art
Storms
surge
wind waves
East Mediterranean
Mediterranean Sea
Adriatic Sea
downscaling
Scale reduction
Surge
Sea state
inundations
Limited area model
historical storms
extreme value
Predictability
Wind wave
wind waves
meteorological modelling
performances
storms
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Summary:The performance of state‐of‐the‐art meteorological and oceanographic numerical systems in predicting the sea state in the Adriatic Sea during intense storms is assessed. Two major storms that affected Venice are discussed. The first storm occurred on 4 November 1966, when Venice suffered its most dramatic flood event. The damage and loss of life caused by the storm and the associated flood were extremely high also because the event was poorly forecast. The 1966 event is reanalysed using state‐of‐the‐art meteorological and oceanographic numerical systems to investigate whether the poor forecast quality was due to a lack of data or of suitable numerical modelling. The second severe storm took place on 22 December 1979, when Venice experienced the second‐worst ‘acqua‐alta’ conditions in recorded history. Results show that with the present numerical systems both storms and associated wave and surge conditions could have been forecast several days in advance. Potential implications for the prediction of more frequent less intense storms are discussed, and a suitably enhanced system based on a global meteorological model and a limited area one is outlined. Copyright © 2010 Royal Meteorological Society
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ISSN:0035-9009
1477-870X
1477-870X
DOI:10.1002/qj.567