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Seaborne movement underpins frontier research in prehistoric archaeology, including water-crossings in the context of human dispersals, and island colonisation. Yet, it also controls the degree of interaction between locations, which in turn is essential for investigating the properties of maritime networks. The onset of the Holocene (circa 12,000 years ago) is a critical period for understanding the origins of early visitors/inhabitants to the island of Cyprus in the Eastern Mediterranean in connection with the spread of Neolithic cultures in the region. The research undertaken in this work exemplifies the synergies between archaeology, physical sciences and geomatics, towards providing novel insights on the feasibility of drift-induced seaborne movement and the corresponding trip duration between Cyprus and coastal regions on the surrounding mainland. The overarching objective is to support archaeological inquiry regarding the possible origins of these visitors/inhabitants—Anatolia and/or the Levant being two suggested origins. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Offshore wind offers an excellent opportunity for domestic renewable energy production with a vast potential for future energy systems. Offshore wind resource assessment, however, can be challenging. Remote sensing data e.g., Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), provide high spatial resolution detailed information on the spatial variability of offshore wind and have been used for wind resource assessment, as well as for the long-term validation of wind speed estimates from other sources (e.g. Numerical Weather Prediction models). This paper focuses on the evaluation of a 26-month time-series of Sentinel-1 SAR Level 2 OCN products for wind resource assessment in the offshore areas around Cyprus. Sentinel data were evaluated against a 10-year regional reanalysis dataset (UERRA) time-series and wind measurements from 5 coastal meteorological stations in Cyprus. Comparison revealed an overall agreement between the fitted stations and Sentinel Weibull distributions while discrepancies exist between the two data sources and UERRA. Bias observed between Sentinel and UERRA Weibull-derived statistics appears to be spatially dependent. Preliminary wind power assessment results indicate a significant wind power potential for the southwestern offshore areas of Cyprus, surpassing 400 W / m 2 on average, offering thus economically viable solutions in terms of a future offshore wind power project development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ROMS-AGRIF (Regional Ocean Model System, Adaptative Mesh Refinement In Fortran) is a free surface numerical ocean model that solves the primitive equation with the Boussinesq approximation with respect to hydrostatic vertical momentum balance. The model uses terrain-following vertical coordinates that allow differential stretching, within orthogonal, curvilinear, spherical horizontal coordinates. Equations are solved with short time steps for barotropic dynamic (ssh and 2D momentum) and a much larger time steps for baroclinic dynamic (T,S, 3D momentum) in a split explicit scheme. It uses rotated tensors to reduce diapycnal mixing and improved calculation of horizontal pressure gradient, following surface and bottom KPP turbulent closure model, thus obtaining high advection scheme. It uses adaptive mixed radiations/nudging open boundary conditions and it uses parallelization by two-dimensional subdomain partitioning, providing shared (OpenMP, as in our case) and distributed (MPI) parallelization. Also, it provides dynamic nesting capability with the AGRIF (Adaptive Grid Refinement in Fortran) library. It is an open source Fortran code coupled to several models including biogeochemistry, waves, sediments, bio-optical and sea ice. It offers great flexibility for configuration and is widely used by the scientific community for a diverse range of applications.ROMS-AGRIF version 3.1.1,(2014), has been applied on Eastern Mediterranean and, specifically, for first time over the Levantine and Cyprus Seas, covering the area that is defined by the geographical coordinates, 30.05º E to 36.25º E longitude and 30.99º N to 36.96º N latitude. The model's horizontal resolution is approximately 5.5km x 4.6km (122 XI x 142 ETA cell points) with an internal nested grid of 1.8km over the area defined by longitude 33.03 E to 34.06 E and latitude 33.68 N to 34.44 N (62 XI x 56 ETA cell points), at 30 vertical, terrain following, s-levels The model is using initial and boundary conditions from Marine Copernicus Portal data and surface fluxes from NOAA Global Forecast System. The grid has been created based on EMODNET Bathymetry portal data (tile 241). All data used are free open source.The model is running in operational prognostic mode, producing results every six hours, for a period of ten days, with daily averages included. Comparisons of the results with the CYCOFOS system (Cyprus Coastal Ocean Forecasting and Observing System) and with ARGOS float profiles shown compliance and very high accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]