Abstract
Abstract. Statistics of anticyclonic eddy activity and eddy trajectories in the Levantine Basin over the 2000–2018 period are analyzed using the DYNED-Atlas database, which links automated mesoscale eddy detection by the Angular Momentum Eddy Detection and Tracking Algorithm (AMEDA) algorithm to in situ oceanographic observations. This easternmost region of the Mediterranean Sea, delimited by the Levantine coast and Cyprus, has a complex eddying activity, which has not yet been fully characterized. In this paper, we use Lagrangian tracking to investigate the eddy fluxes and interactions between different subregions in this area. The anticyclonic structure above the Eratosthenes Seamount is identified as hosting an anticyclone attractor, constituted by a succession of long-lived anticyclones. It has a larger radius and is more persistent (staying in the same position for up to 4 years with successive merging events) than other eddies in this region. Quantification of anticyclone flux shows that anticyclones that drift towards the Eratosthenes Seamount are mainly formed along the Israeli coast or in a neighboring area west of the seamount. The southeastern Levantine area is isolated, with no anticyclone transfers to or from the western part of the basin, defining the effective attraction basin for the Eratosthenes anticyclone attractor. Co-localized in situ profiles inside eddies provide quantitative information on their subsurface physical anomaly signature, whose intensity can vary greatly with respect to the dynamical surface signature intensity. Despite interannual variability, the so-called Eratosthenes anticyclone attractor stores a larger amount of heat and salt than neighboring anticyclones, in a deeper subsurface anomaly that usually extends down to 500 m. This suggests that this attractor could concentrate heat and salt from this subbasin, which will impact the properties of intermediate water masses created there.
Highlights
The circulation in the eastern part of the Mediterranean Sea has not been investigated as extensively as the western part, and some aspects of its circulation are still the subject of scientific debate
Extensive in situ oceanographic surveys have been performed in previous decades (Robinson et al, 1991; Brenner, 1993; Hayes et al, 2011); of note is the work of the Physical Oceanography of the Eastern Mediterranean (POEM) group, which detected some recurrent large longlived anticyclonic structures in the 1980s: Ierapetra southeast of Crete and Marsa Matruh
As opposed to previous studies that either considered eddy activity from “building-block” structures (Robinson et al, 1991) or eddy kinetic energy (EKE) fields derived from sea level anomalies fields (SLAs) compared to a mean dynamic topography (MDT) (Amitai et al, 2010), we follow eddies as daily, individual detections gathered in tracks
Summary
The circulation in the eastern part of the Mediterranean Sea has not been investigated as extensively as the western part, and some aspects of its circulation are still the subject of scientific debate. Since the satellite sea surface temperature (SST) images in the 1990s, there has been overall agreement regarding the mean counterclockwise surface circulation in the eastern Mediterranean Basin, with the Atlantic waters (AWs) coming through the Strait of Sicily, following the LibyoEgyptian coast, and continuing along the Levantine and Turkish coasts (Hamad et al, 2006). South of Cyprus, different authors proposed a multipole structure named “Shikmona”, and they named the most active feature of this structure the “Cyprus eddy” (Brenner, 1993; Zodiatis et al, 2010). Due to their limited time coverage, these studies had a static perspective. In the more recent hydrographic regionalization review of Ayata et al (2018), the anticyclonic structure south of Cyprus is called the “Eratosthenes anticyclone”, which is the name used hereafter
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