Identifying the sensitivity of precipitation of Anatolian peninsula to Mediterranean and Black Sea surface temperature

Abstract

This study investigates the intra-seasonal relationship between the sea surface temperatures of the Mediterranean and Black Seas and the precipitation (SST–P) of the Anatolian peninsula. Furthermore, this study might also help to understand the underlying mechanisms behind the complex interactions between the atmosphere and ocean in the region. The study presents a time-phase relationship analysis based simply on the lagged-correlations between SST and P, utilizing a large set of daily gridded observational products for precipitation (i.e. TRMM, GPCP, E-OBS and ERA-Interim) as well as in-situ observations and satellite derived gridded SST datasets (AVHRR), aiming to show the range of the uncertainty in the data. The analysis is also extended to investigate the possible link between surface flux components (FLX; shortwave, longwave, latent and sensible heat fluxes) and precipitation over the seas. The results clearly show a significant and strong relationship at intra-seasonal time scales between the sea surface temperatures of the surrounding seas and the precipitation over the Anatolian peninsula, depending on the analyzed season and dataset. In general, the strongest SST–P relationship appears in fall season, irrespective of the analyzed dataset. In this case, the all sub-basins of the peninsula are identified to exhibit strong sensitivity to the SST of the eastern and central Mediterranean, as well as the Black Sea. The analysis also indicates a strong SST–P relationship for the eastern Mediterranean, Levantine and Black Sea regions in winter and spring, but with a slightly lower level significance. It is also revealed that the strongest SST–P and FLX–P relationship over the sea appears in the western and central Mediterranean and Black Sea region.