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CALYPSO FollowOn celebrates its deliverables in Catania

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  • 10:14, 09 Dec 2015

The CALYPSO project collected further praise by the Italian stakeholders attending a dedicated seminar during the final meeting held on 2 December 2015 at the Aula Magna del Palazzo Centrale dell鈥橴niversit脿 degli Studi di Catania. The meeting was attended by high officials from regional government, Italian civil protection, military officials, coastguard and others. Prof. Aldo Drago (Project Leader), other members of the Physical Oceanography Research Group within the Department of Geosciences at the University of Malta and Sicilian partners demonstrated the work done through this collaboration between Maltese and Sicilian partners. The meeting was covered by RaiTV.

CALYPSO FollowOn builds on the achievements of the previous successful project, again partly funded by the Italia-Malta programme 2007-2013, and coming to an end later on this month as a fourth HF radar antenna is being set up these days to join the already existing network of three radars monitoring sea surface currents in the stretch of sea between Malta and Sicily. With this configuration the CALYPSO system becomes the most complete HF radar network in Europe with an increased spatial coverage and higher stability in terms of data management redundancy with network servers on both the Malta and Sicily sides.

The importance of CALYPSO relates to the value of the delivered data in key applications especially those related to the mitigation of marine oil spills and to the support in search and rescue operations. The assimilation of HF radar data into circulation models serves to improve the skill of oil transport/drift simulations improving the quality of prediction/backtracking; in search and rescue HF radar data help to reduce the search area and to better predict where objects/persons are moving. 

The Malta/Gozo radar pair is in operation since late summer 2012 and has furthermore served to identify circulation patterns yet unknown in the Malta-Sicily Channel. In particular, the winter anticyclonic circulation north of Gozo favours re-circulation of pollution in the area, leading to an oil spill in the area possibly hitting repeatedly our coasts as it returns back in succession by the sea current flows.   

In his address to the meeting Prof. Aldo Drago promised that 'the CALYPSO project will not stop here, and plans are already in place to extend the monitoring of currents south of Malta with obvious implications in aid to the Armed Forces of Malta and the Italian coastguard for rescuing persons in distress at sea, especially in this hot area of illegal immigration.'

Photo: Prof. Aldo Drago (CALYPSO project leader) presenting the project deliverables and future plans

Members on the panel from left to right: Prof. Rosario Sinatra (CALYPSO representative for CUTGANA, Prof. Giuseppe Ciraolo (Sicilian Focal Point for CALYPSO and representative for University of Palermo), Sen. Giuseppe Marinello (Presidente Commissione Territorio, Ambiente e Beni Ambientali, Senato della Repubblica); Prof. Giacomo Pignataro (Magnifico Rettore dell鈥橴niversit脿 di Catania); Dott.ssa Chiara Cal矛 (Console onorario di Malta); Prof. Aldo Drago (CALYPSO FO Project Leader, University of Malta) and Dott. Francesco Licata di Baucina (Direttore generale Arpa Sicilia). 

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