The Mediterranean Sea is a mid-latitude marginal sea, particularly responsive to climate change as reported by recent studies. The Sicily Channel is a choke point separating the sea in two main basins, the Eastern Mediterranean Sea and the Western Mediterranean Sea. Here, we report and analyse a long-term record (1993–2016) of the thermohaline properties of the Intermediate Water that crosses the Sicily Channel, showing increasing temperature and salinity trends much stronger than those observed at intermediate depths in the global ocean. We investigate the causes of the observed trends and in particular determine the role of a changing climate over the Eastern Mediterranean, where the Intermediate Water is formed. The long-term Sicily record reveals how fast the response to climate change can be in a marginal sea like the Mediterranean Sea compared to the global ocean, and demonstrates the essential role of long time series in the ocean.
Abstract. Meteorological and sea temperature data from the ODAS Italia 1 buoy (Ligurian Sea, Western Mediterranean) are used to study the anomalous warming of summer 2003 at sea. The event was related to the record heat wave that interested much of Europe from June to September of that year. The data show that the anomalous warming was prevalently confined to within a few meters below the sea surface. On the contrary, the temperatures in the underlying layers were lower than usual. The limited vertical propagation of heat is ascribed to the high temperature difference that arose between the surface and the deeper layers due to protracted calm weather conditions. The degree of penetration of heat deduced from the observations is consistent with that computed on the basis of an energetic argument, wherein the wind constitutes the sole supply of kinetic energy, while the heating is viewed as the source of potential energy that must be "subtracted" by mixing. The results support the hypothesis that the scanty energy from the wind is mainly responsible for the development of the temperature anomaly at the sea surface.
Abstract. The deep waters of the western Mediterranean Sea have become saltier and warmer for at least the past 40 years at rates of about 0.015 and 0.04 • C per decade. Here we show that two processes contribute to these increases in temperature and salinity. On interannual timescales, deep water formation events in severe winters transmit increasingly salty intermediate waters into the deep water. The second process is a steady downward flux of heat and salt associated with salt finger mixing down through the halocline-thermocline that connects the Levantine Intermediate Water with the deep water. We illustrate these two processes with observations from repeat surveys of the western Mediterranean basin we have made over the past 10 years.
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