Calypso project launched

A consortium formed by four partners – namely University of Malta, Transport Malta, Civil Protection Malta and Armed Forces of Malta – and 4 partners from Sicily – ARPA Sicilia, IAMC-CNR Capo Granitola, Università degli Studi di Palermo and Universita’ Di Catania has been launched with the aim to utilise a top-end technology, consisting of an array of HF radars to monitor in real-time marine surface conditions in the Malta Channel. The CALYPSO project is coordinated by the Physical Oceanography Unit (PO-Unit) within the University of Malta. The consortium consists of research entities and also public entities with responsibilities for civil and environmental protection, surveillance, security and response to hazards. The HF radar system set-up within this project consists of permanent installations on the Malta/Gozo northern shoreline and on the southern Sicilian side (Figure 1). The system is able to operate routinely to provide synoptic maps of currents in real-time every hour and with a high resolution and coverage in space. Data from the HF radars together with outputs from numerical modelling applications that have also been further developed within this project, provide accurate information that allow the monitoring and effective response for the eventuality of an oil spill. [23video id="8616528" token="9e39398140c82ca3c582d8c04a3d84f2" width="665" height="374"]