Aliasing due to sampling of the Adriatic temperature, salinity and density in space

High-resolution underway temperature and conductivity measurements collected by R/V Knorr during winter and spring 2003 are used to characterize errors associated with spatial aliasing in the northern and central Adriatic Sea. During winter, 99th percentile temperature, salinity and density errors were 0.62 °C, 0.25 and 0.12 kg/m3 (0.25 °C, 0.10 and 0.05 kg/m3) for sampling at 10 km (5 km) horizontal resolution, respectively. The corresponding values in spring were 1.31 °C, 0.50 and 0.40 kg/m3 (0.93 °C, 0.25 and 0.22 kg/m3) for the 10 km (5 km) sample spacing, respectively. The largest errors were associated with energetic regions over the shallow, western Adriatic, in front of the Po River mouth and off the tip of the Istrian peninsula. The deeper eastern basin exhibited smaller errors. The variability of errors in time and space reflected the variability of small-scale density features, characterized by wavelengths as small as 2 km in winter and 1 km in spring and being more pronounced in the western and northern parts of the Adriatic. As these results indicate that errors associated with undersampling can be considerable, they should be taken into account while planning future CTD measurements in the region.