An Overview of Ocean Modeling in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea

During the past thirty years renewed interest in investigating the circulation of the Mediterranean Sea in general and specifically the eastern Mediterranean, has led to the rapid development and application of ocean models to this area. The models are used to improve our scientific understanding of the system as well as for forecasting and assessing potential environmental impacts of anthropogenic activities such as the recent exploration and exploitation of offshore gas and oil reserves. At the center of these modeling systems is the circulation model which is based on the primitive equations form of the Navier-Stokes equation. The numerical schemes are generally based on second order accurate finite differencing the Eulerian form of the equations. In this lecture a general overview will be given of ocean modeling in the eastern Mediterranean. Examples will be shown for climate scenario simulations, for an operational ocean forecasting system, and for recent downstream applications such as an ecosystem model and for an oil spill model.