Climatic Indices over the Mediterranean Sea: A Review

Francisco Criado-Aldeanueva,Javier Soto-Navarro

doi:10.3390/app10175790

Abstract

The Mediterranean Sea, strategically situated across a dynamic frontier line that separates two regions with different climates (Europe and North Africa), has been the focus of attention of many studies dealing with its thermohaline circulation, deep water formation processes or heat and freshwater budgets. Large-scale atmospheric forcing has been found to play an important role in these topics and attention has been renewed in climatic indices that can be used as a proxy for atmospheric variability. Among them, the North Atlantic oscillation, the East Atlantic or the East Atlantic–West Russia patterns have been widely addressed but much less attention has been devoted to a Mediterranean mode, the Mediterranean oscillation. This overview summarizes the recent advances that have been achieved in the understanding of these climatic indices and their influence on the functioning of the Mediterranean from a physical point of view. The important role of the Mediterranean oscillation is emphasized and the most relevant aspects of the other indices are revisited and discussed.

Highlights

The Mediterranean Sea acts as a natural laboratory since, despite its reduced dimensions, most of the processes typical of global ocean circulation, such as deep water formation or thermohaline circulation, take place in the basin
Concluding Remarks and Future Work. This overview has revisited the recent advances in the understanding of several prominent climatic indices that influence the functioning of the Mediterranean Sea from a physical point of view
The North Atlantic oscillation (NAO) index is widely recognized as representative of one the most important modes of atmospheric variability in the northern hemisphere and the Mediterranean basin

Summary

Introduction

The Mediterranean Sea acts as a natural laboratory since, despite its reduced dimensions, most of the processes typical of global ocean circulation, such as deep water formation or thermohaline circulation, take place in the basin. With respect to interannual variability, only a few of the most recent works have focused on this flux exchanged between the atmosphere and the ocean and indicates a ~40-year period multidecadal topic and the associated forcing mechanisms, since longer datasets are necessary. In this review, exchanged between the atmosphere and the ocean and indicates a ~40-year period multidecadal the relevance of the most important modes of atmospheric variability in the Mediterranean region from oscillation that is likely to be related to large-scale atmospheric forcing. To explore this linkage, a physicalseveral pointclimatic of view. Mediterranean, deep convection takes place in the Gulf of Lions, generating the Western Mediterranean deep water (WMDW), which is incorporated into the Mediterranean outflow through Gibraltar [23,24,25,26,27]

Large-Scale Atmospheric Forcing

Findings

Concluding Remarks and Future Work