OBJECTIVES

The major objective of the ADIOS project is to investigate and to quantify processes driving interannual to decadal thermohaline variations in the Adriatic-Ionian basin. This objective will be achieved by:

• documenting interannual to decadal variability from long-term oceanographic series and existing climate models,
  
• investigating short- and long-time processes that drive the Adriatic-Ionian thermohaline circulation, primarily the Adriatic dense water formation and the BiOS (Adriatic-Ionian Bimodal Oscillating System), and
  
• assessing past and future Adriatic climate and variability from the Adriatic-adopted high-resolution atmosphere/ocean climate model runs.

The first ADIOS objective is to keep ‘alive’ long-term measurements along the central Adriatic long-term transects, primarily of the Palagruža Sill transect, which has been surveyed since early 1950 to almost nowadays. Aside from satellite products, these data are crucial for verification of any long-term ocean model, and for that reason it is of utmost importance to carry out these observations.

The second ADIOS objective is to merge observational efforts for monitoring the Adriatic dynamics, coming from Croatian and Italian research and monitoring programmes. Croatian research and investment in ocean studies is really low compared to Italian efforts, which are operating a great number of observational programmes, like glider campaigns, ARGO programme with several profiling floats active in the Adriatic, drifter programme, etc. OGS Institute has been also engaged in a number of field campaigns along the central and southern Adriatic, thus all of these data will be analysed coherently within the ADIOS project.

The third ADIOS objective is to assess the performance of the existing long-term past climate ocean simulations in the Adriatic Sea, available through the Med-CORDEX initiative and through collaboration with CNRM modelling group in Toulouse, and to quantify their performance, strengths and weaknesses in reproducing known Adriatic circulation and dynamics.

The fourth specific objective is to improve the Adriatic ocean climate modelling by executing state-of-the-art Adriatic-friendly atmosphere-ocean past and future climate runs embedded in existing regional atmosphere/ocean model products. Resolution of such model run will be much higher than of existing models and will allow for much better quantification of the long-term and future changes in the Adriatic thermohaline properties, processes and dynamics (e.g. dense water formation), interannual and decadal variability (like BiOS) and trends.