During winters, the northern Adriatic Sea

experiences frequent, intense cold-air out-breaks that drive oceanic heat loss and imprint complex but predictable patterns in the underlying waters. This strong, reli-able forcing makes this region an excellent laboratory for observational and numerical investigations of air-sea interaction, sediment and biological transport, and mesoscale wind-driven fl ow. Narrow sea surface wind jets, commonly known as “bora, ” occur when cold, dry air spills through gaps in the Dinaric Alps (the moun-tain range situated along the Adriatic’s eastern shore). Horizontal variations in these winds drive a mosaic of oceanic cyclonic and anticy-clonic cells that draw coastal waters far into the middle basin. The winds also drive intense cooling and overturning, producing a sharp front between dense, vertically homogenous waters (North Adriatic Dense Water, or NAdDW) in the north and the lighter (colder, fresher), stratifi ed waters of the Po River plume. Once subducted at the front, the NAdDW fl ows south-ward in a narrow vein following the isobaths (contours of constant depth) of the Italian coast. In addition to governing the basin’s gen-eral circulation, these processes also infl uence sediment transport and modulate biological and optical variability. Building on a long history of scientific investigations [Cushman-Roisin et al., 2001], scientists from several countries conducted intensive multi-disciplinary studies of th