• Speaker: Dr. Anne Molcard. Mediterranean Institute of Oceanography. MIO. Université de Toulon

Esporles, April 4, 2022. On April 6 at 11:00 (GMT+2: Vigo, Barcelona, Paris) we will get back to the cycle of joint seminars with CEAB, ICM, ICMAN and IIM entitled "Seamposium: Dealing with new frontiers of marine research", this time jointly organized as IMEDEA New Frontiers webinar's series.

TITLE: What to do with 10 years of (gappy) HFR data. Some illustrations from the area of Toulon

SPEAKER: Dr. Anne Molcard. Mediterranean Institute of Oceanography. MIO. Université de Toulon

ABSTRACT: The High-Frequency RADAR (HFR) is nowadays accepted as a reliable oceanographic observational system suitable to the observation of surface currents in coastal waters. Where in situ traditional instruments cannot cover multiple points simultaneously, and satellite measurements have low temporal frequency and are not always suited to near-coast observations, HFR can provide a unique insight of the circulation of coastal areas. The deployment of these land-based systems along the Mediterranean coast has drastically increased with for example over 50 HFR deployed in Europe in the past 10 years. Since 2012, two WERA (Wellen Radar) HFR are installed on the Var coast for the measure of the surface current velocity in the coastal area of Toulon.  The coastal circulation off the south of France is mostly ruled by a boundary current flowing counterclockwise from the Italian to the Catalan coasts: the Northern Current, associated strong mesoscale activity. During this seminar, HFR observations, filling methods and data fusion will be discussed. From a physical point of view, we will analyze the scales of variability, the eddy demography, the balanced/unbalanced decomposition of surface velocity and the transport dynamics.

BIOGRAPHY: Anne Molcard is a physical oceanographer, professor at the University of Toulon. Her main research interests are the study of the dynamics of small-scale processes in the coastal zone (meso and sub mesoscale), through observation and numerical modelling; transport dynamics and development of methodologies for data fusion; environmental applications; application of artificial intelligence (AI) methods to oceanography.