Publications scientifiques

The knowledge of extreme coastal water levels is useful for coastal flooding studies or the design of coastal defences. While deriving such extremes with standard analyses using tide-gauge measurements, one often needs to deal with limited effective duration of observation which can result in large statistical uncertainties. This is even truer when one faces the issue of outliers, those particularly extreme values distant from the others which increase the uncertainty on the results.

Recent works (Evelpidou et al., 2012) suggest that the modern tidal notch is disappearing worldwide due sea level rise over the last century. In order to assess this hypothesis, we measured modern tidal notches in several of sites along the Mediterranean coasts. We report observations on tidal notches cut along carbonate coasts from 73 sites from Italy, France, Croatia, Montenegro, Greece, Malta and Spain, plus additional observations carried outside the Mediterranean.

Haplognathia ruberrima is a cosmopolitan gnathostomulid species found in sulfur bacterial mats in mangroves in Guadeloupe (French West Indies). Haplognathia ruberrima presents a δ¹³C value lower than all measured meiofaunal grazers and lower than the available measured food sources of this environment. This low δ¹³C value can not be due to specific ingestion of ¹³C-depleted methanogenic bacteria because abundances of those bacteria are reduced in surficial and deep sediments as revealed by δ¹³C of bacterial fatty acid.

The regional and near-coastal circulation around New Caledonia is investigated using a compilation of more than 20 years of observations. Velocity profiles acquired by Shipboard Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler (SADCP) during 109 research cruises and ship transits since 1991 are analyzed and compared with absolute geostrophic currents inferred from hydrographic profiles and Argo floats drifts. In addition, altimetric surface currents are used to explore the variability of the circulation at various timescales.

This research is carried out in the framework of the program Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) which is a partnership between NASA and CNES. Here, a new hybrid model is implemented for filling gaps and forecasting the hourly sea level variability by combining classical harmonic analyses to high statistical methods to reproduce the deterministic and stochastic processes, respectively.

Les submersions marines sont le plus souvent associées à des conditions météorologiques locales de tempête et aux phénomènes bien connus de surcote résultant du cumul de l’effet barométrique inverse et des vents d'afflux. Le déferlement des vagues joue également un rôle prépondérant dans la surélévation totale. Il provoque des variations du niveau d’eau de deux types : une surélévation statique du niveau moyen (surcote de vague) et des variations instantanées provoquées par le jet de rive. Ces deux phénomènes sont responsables dans certains cas de plus de 2/3 de la surélévation totale.

This study investigates the contributions of short waves in storm surges through the hindcast of two storms that hit the central part of the Bay of Biscay recently. Despite displaying comparable wind speed and directions in the study area, these two storms induced different storm surges and sea states. Xynthia (27–28th of February 2010) was characterized by large (up to 7 m significant wave height H_s) and short-period waves and induced an exceptional storm surge, locally larger than 1.6 m.

Tidal asymmetry is a phenomenon that characterises estuarine hydrodynamics and has a strong impact on sediment dynamics. Extensive research has been dedicated to studying tidal dynamics in semidiurnal macrotidal estuaries, highlighting several general principles. The ratio of flood to ebb peak velocities and differences in ebb and flood durations are often used to characterise the asymmetry encountered in estuaries.

The GNSS reflectometry technique provides geometric information on the environment surrounding the GNSS antenna including the vertical distance to a reflecting surface. We use sea-surface reflections of GPS signals, recorded as oscillations in signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), to estimate the GNSS to tide gauge (TG) levelling tie, and thus the ellipsoidal heights of the TG. We develop approaches to isolate SNR data dominated by sea-surface reflections and to remove SNR frequency changes caused by the dynamic sea surface.