The Ocean Physics and Modelling (OPAM) Group at the University of Athens
The Ocean Physics And Modelling (OPAM) group belongs to the Division of Envrironmental Physics of the University of Athens, Greece. The research activities of the group are focused on various aspects of the Physical Oceanography of the Mediterranean Sea and its sub-basins. For a number of years the main focus was the study of the general circulation, the deep and intermediate water formation processes and the interaction of the Mediterranean Sea with the atmosphere on various time scales, from seasonal to climatic. Both data analysis and numerical modeling are used as tools for those studies. A special webpage on the Aegean Sea Research is available with historical and online profiling float data in the basin.
In recent years, the group has also been involved in operational oceanography of the Mediterranean Sea and more specifically of the Eastern Mediterranean with the development of a high-resolution operational numerical model called the ALERMO (Aegean Levantine Eddy Resolving Model). Nested in ALERMO, and coupled with an oilspill monitoring/forecasting application is the Nort Aegean Forecasting activity. It is also involved in the study of the transport of Saharan dust within the Mediterranean Sea following its atmospheric deposition.
Finally, the group developed recently the TRITON wave forecast system which goes from Global to Regional down to Coastal. This system has been developed in cooperation with the Atmospheric Modelling and Weather Forecast group of our Department.