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Inter-Annual Variability and Trends of Sea Level and Sea Surface Temperature in the Mediterranean Sea over the Last 25 Years

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Abstract

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.

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  • 13 June 2019

    Due to an unfortunate oversight the author name “Abdallah Mohamed Abdallah” has been misspelt

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Acknowledgements

Authors would like to acknowledge the organizations that provided the sources of the data used in this work, including CMEMS Project for the altimetry products, the Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level (PSMSL) for tide gauge data, NOAA for the SST&NAO data, and ECMWF for providing a comprehensive access to SLP data. We would like to thank Prof. Nikolaos Skliris (University of Southampton) for his constructive and helpful comments on the revised manuscript. The authors are also grateful to the anonymous reviewers, who have greatly improved the quality of this work with their advice and helpful remarks.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Science, Department of Oceanography, University of Alexandria, Alexandria, Egypt

    Bayoumy Mohamed, Abdallah Mohamed Abdallah, Khaled Alam El-Din, Hazem Nagy & Mohamed Shaltout

  2. Marine Institute, Oranmore, Galway, Ireland

    Hazem Nagy

  3. Department of Earth Sciences, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden

    Mohamed Shaltout

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  1. Bayoumy Mohamed
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Mohamed, B., Abdallah, A.M., Alam El-Din, K. et al. Inter-Annual Variability and Trends of Sea Level and Sea Surface Temperature in the Mediterranean Sea over the Last 25 Years. Pure Appl. Geophys. 176, 3787–3810 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00024-019-02156-w

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