The cyclone that triggered the heavy rains at the origin of the floods in Emilia-Romagna caused a cooling of between 0.5 and 1.2 degrees centigrade in the waters of the Tyrrhenian Sea and the Strait of Sicily over three days approximately, in a deep layer between 40 and 50 meters. This is indicated by the data collected by the instruments of the National Institute of Oceanography and Experimental Geophysics. “At first glance it seems like a slight cooling, but we must consider that, unlike the air, the sea takes a long time to cool down”, Milena Menna, a researcher in the Oceanography Section of the OGS, told ANSA. The highest surface water temperature had been reached with the arrival of spring, but the arrival of the cyclone caused a return to typical winter conditions.
The data was collected as part of the international research infrastructure called Euro-Argo, which monitors the oceans using instruments called Argo floats. It was also the latter who recorded the drop in temperature in the Tyrrhenian Sea and in the Strait of Sicily. The data is interesting, continues the researcher, because “just like the atmosphere influences the sea, the sea can influence the space-time evolution of a cyclone. This is the concept at the basis of our research”, says Menna. For this reason, the Argo floats are also equipped with “sensors capable of measuring atmospheric pressure, which is an important parameter for reconstructing the evolution of the atmospheric event and possibly evaluating the forecast error with a view to improving the forecast”, observes Marco Reale, of the Oceanography Section of the OGS.
For the researcher “collecting in-situ data is essential to better understand the effect of cyclones and provide real-time information to forecasting models”. Consequently, “when we know that there is an incoming perturbation, we increase the sampling frequency of the Argo floats to get more information. It is not obvious to be able to capture the event because it is not possible to be certain about the trajectory that the atmospheric system will follow “.
The Argo floats work autonomously and, once released into the sea, they get carried away by the currents, collecting physical and biogeochemical data along the entire water column, depending on the type of sampling set. The data make it possible to study the effects of atmospheric cyclones on the physical and biogeochemical parameters of the sea and to understand how the marine environment behaves in the face of intense perturbations, thus contributing to the improvement of mathematical models which allow for the prediction of the temporal evolution of the system .
Source: Ansa
I am a journalist with over 6 years of experience working in the news industry. I currently work as an author for Global Happenings, and my coverage focuses on Technology news. I have written for various publications, including Reuters, The New York Times and The Guardian.
