The fate of new Sea Level Stations along the Brazilian Coast.

Eduardo Marone - CEM/UFPR
Ricardo Camargo - IAG/USP
Coastal regions have a complex natural dynamics, where interactions among oceanic, coastal and continental processes occur. Those are responsible for natural processes of erosion and sedimentation occurring in periods of a few years and even within a few days. Patterns of use and occupation of the Brazilian coast have intensified in the last decades, creating new conflicts that need to be solved under scientific guidance.

The southern portion of the South-American Atlantic coast is often under the influence of synoptic and meso-scale meteorological systems, which induce significant disturbances in the ocean. Such disturbances basically occur in two forms: the occurrence of mean sea level changes (know as meteorological tide) and the generation of surface waves (storms). Both effects can bring serious implications for human activity on the seashore. Port closings due to adverse meteorological conditions, coastal erosion, destruction of seaside buildings, and anomalous flooding are but a few of the direct implications found in the event of synoptic and sub-synoptic meteorological systems passing by the coastal zone. Added to the problems related to natural coastline variations, which are commonly seen in the Brazilian shore, is the anthropic vector. Due to the fact that many of the coastal cities base their economies on beach tourism or the use of certain areas for development of other activities (ports, industries), the coastal zone have felt the direct effects of the demographic growth for years, with the increase in coastal occupation and the multiplication of conflicts.

During the last years, individual efforts to increase the sea level monitoring along the Brazilian coast received special attention by several individual researchers and institutions. On the other hand, the organization of scientific networks was promoted from top-bottom and bottom-up approaches, giving up to a more co-operative behaviour in coastal studies. As a result, several networks operated in order to study and monitor coastal issues, from national projects to co-operative ones, as the Quijote Pilot Project of the Coastal Module of GOOS (Marone et al., 2001. Quijote - a C-GOOS pilot project progressing to the operational stage. The Goos Data Products And Services Bulletin, Paris, France, v. 2, p. 1-8, 2001).

This new scientific environment moved a group of Universities, all related to coastal issues, to create a consortium in order to seek for common interests and to work under the network approach, particularly in Marine Sciences. This consortium, which groups federal universities from the Amazon basin at the Brazilian North, to the Rio Grande State at the Uruguayan border in the South, covering the more of 8000 km of the Brazilian Coast, was organized at the beginning of 2001.

Following the international project of the Millennium Initiative, the Brazilian Ministry of Science and Technology launch a call for projects also in 2001, called Millennium Institutes, one of which was for Marine Sciences. The above-mentioned consortium elaborated a proposal that, after analysis and judgement, was the only winner of the call for Marine Sciences. This project, called ?Use And Appropriation Of Coastal Zone Resources? (RECOS), is co-ordinated by Dr. Jorge P. Castello of the FURG (Fundação Universidade de Rio Grande) and Dr. Paulo Lana of UFPR (Federal University of Paraná) and it was divided in four Thematic Groups. Meanwhile three of the groups are dedicated to environmental issues like health of the ocean and biodiversity in the coastal zone, sustainable mariculture and fisheries, among other coastal issues, one of the modules is related with monitoring, modelling and coastal uses (MMOC). However, this module organization does not imply in separate works, aiming for a truly integrated multi and inter-disciplinary approach. As could be observed, the network was organized based on the local experience and following, in most of the cases, Global Ocean Observing Systems recommendations on coastal issues as presented in the Design Plan for the Coastal Component of the Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS) (GOOS Report No. 90-IOC/INF-1146, 2000). At the MMOC group, several activities are closely linked with GOOS, COOP, GLOSS and PSMSL policies, as we will see in the next few paragraphs. For information about the full Millennium Institute - RECOS project and all this modules, it could be interesting to visit
http://200.17.232.97/milenio/index.htm.

During the Quijote Pilot Project, some full equipped coastal meteocean stations were installed and they are now fully operational and being transformed in a way to submit data directly to Internet in almost real time. Other monitoring programs, which continue to be performed, were the beach profile and coastal changes monitoring. As one of the main goals of Quijote, from the second semester of 2001, the Institute of Astronomy, Geophysics and Atmospheric Sciences of the University of São Paulo opened to the general public the SWAO products and services home-page http://www.surge.iag.usp.br/. Here, the final users and the general public can verify the sea level numerical forecast for the next few days (72 to 120 hours). The forecast includes not only storm surge prediction, but also current and waves field forecast. This is the result of the integration of atmospheric (RAMS - Regional Atmospheric Modelling System) and oceanic (POM - Princeton Ocean Model) and wave (WW3 - WaveWatch-III) numerical models. The home page is up-dated with the result of daily runs at 11:00 GMT for sea level and currents and 15:00 GMT for waves, covering from the
Patagonian shelf (Argentina) to South the Bahia State (Espírito Santo State, Brazil).

In order to give a full condition of ?operational oceanography? to the activities, finite in time when the Quijote PP, the consortium decided to extend the modelling and monitoring of coastal issues at the RECOS Project through the MMOC Thematic Group, adding also the socio-economical issues related with the human uses of the coastal area.

The monitoring part of the project implies supplying the member groups with coastal monitoring stations, which will transmit data to local servers. These will then transfer the data to the central database server for validation and storage and to the modelling group server for model assimilation and validation.

The numerical forecast will be improved and extended, using the network to calibrate and adjust the model outputs. At the MMOC, the covered area will be extended for the wave forecast in order to cover the entire Brazilian coast. New and more powerful computers are being installed within the Millennium Initiative MMOC module, and other local and regional funding agencies.

The MMOC group expects to have installed through the Millennium initiative, up to 6 new coastal meteocean station from the Amazon basin to the Uruguayan border, added to the actual operational ones, among many other that could be included in a near future (Table 1).

The meteocean station, which are being purchased, will have, apart of a full set of meteorological sensors, ocean sensors to measure water temperature and salinity, as well as sea level and, in some cases, surface ocean waves. All the sea level sensors, whenever possible, will follow the GLOSS and/or PSMSL standards and, through the official channels, will be included as part of GLOSS and PSMSL Brazilian contribution to these and other international programmes.

Table 1: Types and location of Meteocean Station of the MMOC Group

Location	Type	Notes
Belém (Bragança)	MO	New O + Already Installed M
Recife	MO	New
Vitória	MOW	New
Rio de Janeiro	MO	New
Paraná	MOW	Existing
Itajaí	MO	Existing
São Francisco	M	New (PETROBRAS)
Florianópolis	M	Existing
Tramandai	MOW	New OW + Already Installed M
Rio Grande	M	Existing
Chui	M	New
To be decided	W	In Belem or Recife

M: Meteorological O: Oceanographic W: Waves

Location

Notes