[en] Sea level and sea surface temperature inter-annual variability and trends in the Mediterranean Sea were investigated during the period 1993–2017. These were carried out using gridded absolute dynamic topography from satellite altimetry, tide gauge (TG) time series from 25 stations and gridded sea surface temperature (SST) from advanced very-high-resolution radiometer (AVHRR) data. The coastal TG data were used to verify the satellite derived sea level. Moreover, the contributions of atmospheric pressure and North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) to sea level changes were also examined. The results revealed that the Mediterranean Sea exhibits inter-annual spatiotemporal coherent variability in both sea level and SST. The spatial variability in sea level is more significant over the Adriatic and Aegean Seas, most of the Levantine basin, and along the Tunisian shelf. Marked spatial variability in SST occurs over the central part of the Mediterranean Sea with maximum amplitude in the Tyrrhenian Sea. The highest temporal variability of sea level and SST was found in 2010 and 2003, respectively. The inter-annual variability of sea level and SST accounts for about 32% and 3% of the total variance of sea level and SST, respectively. An analysis of sea level anomaly reveled large negative values during the extended winter of 2011–2012, which may be attributed to the strong positive phase of NAO index. Satellite altimetry indicated a significant positive sea level trend of 2.7 ± 0.41 mm/year together with a significant warming of 0.036 ± 0.003 °C/year over the whole Mediterranean Sea for the period 1993–2017.
Disciplines :
Earth sciences & physical geography
Author, co-author :
Abdallah, Abdallah Mohamed; Faculty of Science, Department of Oceanography, University of Alexandria, Alexandria, Egypt
Alam El-Din, Khaled; Faculty of Science, Department of Oceanography, University of Alexandria, Alexandria, Egypt
Nagy, Hazem; Faculty of Science, Department of Oceanography, University of Alexandria, Alexandria, Egypt ; Marine Institute, Galway, Ireland
Shaltout, Mohamed; Faculty of Science, Department of Oceanography, University of Alexandria, Alexandria, Egypt ; Department of Earth Sciences, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden
Mohamed, Bayoumy Abdelaziz ; Université de Liège - ULiège > Département d'astrophysique, géophysique et océanographie (AGO) > GeoHydrodynamics and Environment Research (GHER)
Language :
English
Title :
Inter-Annual Variability and Trends of Sea Level and Sea Surface Temperature in the Mediterranean Sea over the Last 25 Years
Belkin, I. M. (2009). Rapid warming of large marine ecosystems. Progress in Oceanography. 10.1016/j.pocean.2009.04.011.
Bonaduce, A., Pinardi, N., Oddo, P., Spada, G., & Larnicol, G. (2016). Sea-level variability in the Mediterranean Sea from altimetry and tide gauges. Climate Dynamics, 47(9–10), 2851–2866.
Calafat, F. M., Chambers, D. P., & Tsimplis, M. N. (2012). Mechanisms of decadal sea level variability in the eastern North Atlantic and the Mediterranean Sea. Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans. 10.1029/2012JC008285.
Calafat, F. M., & Gomis, D. (2009). Reconstruction of Mediterranean sea level fields for the period 1945–2000. Global and Planetary Change. 10.1016/j.gloplacha.2008.12.015.
Carrère, L., & Lyard, F. (2003). Modeling the barotropic response of the global ocean to atmospheric wind and pressure forcing - Comparisons with observations. Geophysical Research Letters. 10.1029/2002GL016473.
Cazenave, A., Bonnefond, P., Mercier, F., Dominh, K., & Toumazou, V. (2002). Sea level variations in the Mediterranean Sea and Black Sea from satellite altimetry and tide gauges. Global and Planetary Change. 10.1016/S0921-8181(02)00106-6.
Cazenave, A., Cabanes, C., Dominh, K., & Mangiarotti, S. (2001). Recent sea level change in the Mediterranean sea revealed by Topex/Poseidon satellite altimetry. Geophysical Research Letters, 28(8), 1607–1610. 10.1029/2000GL012628.
Chambers, D. P., Cazenave, A., Champollion, N., Dieng, H., Llovel, W., Forsberg, R., et al. (2017). Evaluation of the global mean sea level budget between 1993 and 2014. Surveys in Geophysics, 38(1), 309–327.
Church, J. A., Clark, P. U., Cazenave, A., Gregory, J. M., Jevrejeva, S., Levermann, A., et al. (2013). Sea level change. Climate change 2013: The physical science basis. Contribution of working group I to the fifth assessment report of the intergovernmental panel on climate change, 1137–1216. 10.1017/CB09781107415315.026.
Church, J. A., Gregory, J., Huybrechts, P., Kuhn, M., Lambeck, K., Nhuan, M., et al. (2001). Changes in sea level. Climate change 2001: The scientific basis: Contribution of working group I to the third assessment report of the intergovernmental panel, 639–694. http://epic.awi.de/4506/1/Chu2001a.pdf%5Cnpapers://f554698c-bc30-43aa-8c0c-c8de8adb48e4/Paper/p2603.
Church, J. A., & White, N. J. (2011). Sea-level rise from the late 19th to the early 21st century. Surveys in Geophysics, 32(4–5), 585–602.
Criado-Aldeanueva, F., Vera, J. D. R., & García-Lafuente, J. (2008). Steric and mass-induced Mediterranean Sea level trends from 14 years of altimetry data. Global and Planetary Change, 60(3), 563–575.
Dasgupta, S., Laplante, B., Murray, S., & Wheeler, D. (2011). Exposure of developing countries to sea-level rise and storm surges. Climatic Change, 106(4), 567–579.
Dee, D. P., Uppala, S. M., Simmons, A. J., Berrisford, P., Poli, P., Kobayashi, S., et al. (2011). The ERA-Interim reanalysis: Configuration and performance of the data assimilation system. Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, 137(656), 553–597.
Ducet, N., Le Traon, P. Y., & Reverdin, G. (2000). Global high-resolution mapping of ocean circulation from TOPEX/Poseidon and ERS-1 and-2. Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, 105(C8), 19477–19498.
Emery, W. J., & Thomson, R. E. (1998). Data Analysis Methods in Physical Oceanography. Estuaries, 22(December), 638. 10.2307/1353059.
Fenoglio-Marc, L. (2002). Long-term sea level change in the Mediterranean Sea from multi-satellite altimetry and tide gauges. Physics and Chemistry of the Earth, Parts A/B/C, 27(32), 1419–1431.
Gačić, M., Civitarese, G., Eusebi Borzelli, G. L., Kovačević, V., Poulain, P. M., Theocharis, A., et al. (2011). On the relationship between the decadal oscillations of the northern Ionian Sea and the salinity distributions in the eastern Mediterranean. Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans. 10.1029/2011JC007280.
Gačić, M., Civitarese, G., Kovacevic, V., Ursella, L., Bensi, M., Menna, M., et al. (2014). Extreme winter 2012 in the Adriatic: An example of climatic effect on the BiOS rhythm. Ocean Science, 10(3), 513.
Gačić, M., Eusebi Borzelli, G. L., Civitarese, G., Cardin, V., & Yari, S. (2010). Can internal processes sustain reversals of the ocean upper circulation? The Ionian Sea example. Geophysical Research Letters. 10.1029/2010GL043216.
Gaspar, P., & Ponte, R. M. (1997). Relation between sea level and barometric pressure determined from altimeter data and model simulations. Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, 102(C1), 961–971.
Gomis, D., Ruiz, S., Sotillo, M. G., Álvarez-Fanjul, E., & Terradas, J. (2008). Low frequency Mediterranean sea level variability: The contribution of atmospheric pressure and wind. Global and Planetary Change. 10.1016/j.gloplacha.2008.06.005.
Haddad, M., Hassani, H., & Taibi, H. (2013). Sea level in the Mediterranean Sea: Seasonal adjustment and trend extraction within the framework of SSA. Earth Science Informatics, 6(2), 99–111.
Holgate, S. J., Matthews, A., Woodworth, P. L., Rickards, L. J., Tamisiea, M. E., Bradshaw, E., et al. (2013). New data systems and products at the permanent service for mean sea level. Journal of Coastal Research, 288, 493–504. 10.2112/JCOASTRES-D-12-00175.1.
Landerer, F. W., & Volkov, D. L. (2013). The anatomy of recent large sea level fluctuations in the Mediterranean Sea. Geophysical Research Letters, 40(3), 553–557.
Maiyza, I. A., & El-Geziry, T. M. (2012). Long term sea-level variation in the south-eastern Mediterranean Sea: A new approach of examination. Journal of Operational Oceanography, 5(2), 53–59.
Marcos, M., & Tsimplis, M. N. (2008). Coastal sea level trends in Southern Europe. Geophysical Journal International. 10.1111/j.1365-246X.2008.03892.x.
Marullo, S., Santoleri, R., Ciani, D., Le Borgne, P., Péré, S., Pinardi, N., et al. (2014). Combining model and geostationary satellite data to reconstruct hourly SST field over the Mediterranean Sea. Remote Sensing of Environment, 146, 11–23.
Mertz, F., Rosmorduc, V., Maheu, C., & Faugère, Y. (2017). Product user manual for sea level SLA products. Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service. http://marine.copernicus.eu/documents/PUM/CMEMS-SL-PUM-008-032-051.pdf. Accessed 10 Nov 2018.
Overland, J. E., & Preisendorfer, R. W. (1982). A significance test for principal components applied to a cyclone climatology. Monthly Weather Review, 110(1), 1–4.
Pastor, F., Valiente, J. A., & Palau, J. L. (2017). Sea surface temperature in the mediterranean: Trends and spatial patterns (1982–2016). Pure and Applied Geophysics. 10.1007/s00024-017-1739-z.
Peltier, W. R., Argus, D. F., & Drummond, R. (2015). Space geodesy constrains ice age terminal deglaciation: The global ICE-6G_C (VM5a) model. Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth, 120(1), 450–487.
Pinardi, N., Zavatarelli, M., Adani, M., Coppini, G., Fratianni, C., Oddo, P., et al. (2015). Mediterranean Sea large-scale low-frequency ocean variability and water mass formation rates from 1987 to 2007: A retrospective analysis. Progress in Oceanography, 132, 318–332.
Preisendorfer, R. W., & Mobley, C. D. (1988). Principal component analysis in meteorology and oceanography (Vol. 425). Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Reynolds, R. W., Smith, T. M., Liu, C., Chelton, D. B., Casey, K. S., & Schlax, M. G. (2007). Daily high-resolution-blended analyses for sea surface temperature. Journal of Climate, 20(22), 5473–5496.
Rio, M. H., Pascual, A., Poulain, P. M., Menna, M., Barceló, B., & Tintoré, J. (2014). Computation of a new mean dynamic topography for the Mediterranean Sea from model outputs, altimeter measurements and oceanographic in situ data. Ocean Science, 10(4), 73.
Rio, M. H., Poulain, P. M., Pascual, A., Mauri, E., Larnicol, G., & Santoleri, R. (2007). A mean dynamic topography of the Mediterranean Sea computed from altimetric data, in situ measurements and a general circulation model. Journal of Marine Systems, 65(1), 484–508.
Rixen, M., Beckers, J. M., Levitus, S., Antonov, J., Boyer, T., Maillard, C., et al. (2005). The western mediterranean deep water: A proxy for climate change. Geophysical Research Letters. 10.1029/2005GL022702.
Shaltout, M., & Omstedt, A. (2014). Recent dynamic topography changes in the Mediterranean Sea analysed from satellite altimetry data. Current Development in Oceanography, 7(1/2), 1.
Skliris, N., Sofianos, S. S., Gkanasos, A., Axaopoulos, P., Mantziafou, A., & Vervatis, V. (2011). Long-term sea surface temperature variability in the Aegean Sea. Advances in Oceanography and Limnology. 10.1080/19475721.2011.601325.
Skliris, N., Sofianos, S., Gkanasos, A., Mantziafou, A., Vervatis, V., Axaopoulos, P., et al. (2012). Decadal scale variability of sea surface temperature in the Mediterranean Sea in relation to atmospheric variability. Ocean Dynamics, 62(1), 13–30.
Stammer, D., Cazenave, A., Ponte, R. M., & Tamisiea, M. E. (2013). Causes for contemporary regional sea level changes. Annual Review of Marine Science, 5, 21–46.
Stanev, E. V., Le Traon, P. Y., & Peneva, E. L. (2000). Sea level variations and their dependency on meteorological and hydrological forcing: Analysis of altimeter and surface data for the Black Sea. Journal of Geophysical Research-Oceans, 105(C7), 17203–17216.
Tsimplis, M. N., Calafat, F. M., Marcos, M., Jordà, G., Gomis, D., Fenoglio-Marc, L., et al. (2013). The effect of the NAO on sea level and on mass changes in the Mediterranean Sea. Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans. 10.1002/jgrc.20078.
Tsimplis, M. N., & Rixen, M. (2002). Sea level in the Mediterranean Sea: the contribution of temperature and salinity changes. Geophysical Research Letters, 29(23), 51–1. 10.1029/2002gl015870.
Tsimplis, M., Spada, G., Marcos, M., & Flemming, N. (2011). Multi-decadal sea level trends and land movements in the Mediterranean Sea with estimates of factors perturbing tide gauge data and cumulative uncertainties. Global and Planetary Change, 76(1–2), 63–76.
Vera, J. D. R., Criado-Aldeanueva, F., García-Lafuente, J., & Soto-Navarro, F. J. (2009). A new insight on the decreasing sea level trend over the Ionian basin in the last decades. Global and Planetary Change, 68(3), 232–235.
Vigo, I., Garcia, D., & Chao, B. F. (2005). Change of sea level trend in the Mediterranean and Black seas. Journal of Marine Research. 10.1357/002224005775247607.
Vigo, M. I., Sánchez-Reales, J. M., Trottini, M., & Chao, B. F. (2011). Mediterranean Sea level variations: Analysis of the satellite altimetric data, 1992–2008. Journal of Geodynamics, 52(3), 271–278.
von Storch, H., & Zwiers, F. W. (1999). Statistical analysis in climate research (p. 484). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Woodworth, P. L., & Player, R. (2003). The permanent service for mean sea level: An update to the 21st century. Journal of Coastal Research. 10.2112/JCOASTRES-D-12-00.
Zerbini, S., Plag, H. P., Baker, T., Becker, M., Billiris, H., Bürki, B., et al. (1996). Sea level in the Mediterranean: A first step towards separating crustal movements and absolute sea-level variations. Global and Planetary Change, 14(1–2), 1–48.
