Target areas (TAs)
Target areas (TAs)
EOP/SOP series are conducted over Target Areas (TAs). During the 3rd HyMeX Workshop, three Target Areas (TAs) have been proposed as candidates for the first EOP/SOP series:
North-Western Mediterranean TA
North-Western Mediterranean concentrates all the intense hydrometeorological phenomena of interest for HyMeX: heavy precipitation systems and flash-flooding occur over the Spanish, French, and Italian coasts during the autumn, and the Gulf of Lions (~42N, 5E) is one of the four major sites of dense water formation and deep ocean convection at the end of winter under the influence of the Mistral and Tramontana regional winds, and of the Gulf of Genoa cyclogenesis. Also the region includes the largest river of the Mediterranean basin, the Rhone, as well as many intermittent rivers with fast and strong response to heavy precipitating systems, which entails specific forecasting issues.
South-Eastern Mediterranean TA
The target area covers the Eastern and South-Eastern Mediterranean area. The sites consist of the western part of Crete Island, the transboundary river basin of the Evros river and three basins in Israel. The Crete site is proposed as a site for the study of heavy precipitation events and flash-flooding. In addition, this target area will allow to study intense rainstorms and flash floods in the dryer climate areas of the Mediterranean (e.g. Israrel region). The TA includes the Evros River in Northern Greece as it is the second biggest river in Eastern Europe. This will allow to study larger scale floods and the effectiveness of water management practises in flood mitigation. Concerning the ocean, there are two areas of formation and propagation of dense water in the North and East of Crete.
The Adriatic TA
The Friuli and Veneto in Italy, and the Dinaric Alps in Slovenia and Croatia have been proposed as a target area for the study of heavy precipitation events and flash-flooding. This region is affected by strong regional Bora winds over the Dinaric Alps. Dense water also forms in the North and South of the Adriatic sub-basin.
This list of TAs is still open, notably regarding North-African sites.
The sites, pilot-sites and super-sites of the Target Areas
Instruments will be deployed in specific locations within the Target Areas (TA).
A site is defined as a region affected by the same hydrometeorological events and a good measurement coverage: radar and surface station over land, ocean and air-sea measurements over the ocean.
A supersite over land or the ocean gathers research instruments dedicated to the study of specific processes. For hydrology, a supersite is basically an instrumented catchment of one to ten km2. For the atmosphere, supersites are either within or outside the site to document the upstream atmospheric conditions for instance.
For hydrology, the term pilot-site is used for medium-size watersheds (typically several thousands km²) for observational and distributed hydrological modelling studies at the regional scale.
Hydrometeorological sites (including at least one hydrological pilot-site or supersite) and atmospheric sites have been identified for HyMeX. They are managed by dedicated Task support (TS).
