Gian Luca Eusebi Borzelli
Miroslav Gačić
Piero Lionello
Paola Malanotte-Rizzoli
Editors
This work is a co-publication of the American Geophysical Union and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Borzelli, Gianluca Eusebi.
The Mediterranean sea : temporal variability and spatial patterns / Gianluca Eusebi Borzelli. – First edition.
pages cm. – (Geophysical monograph series)
Includes index.
ISBN 978-1-118-84734-3 (hardback)
1. Mediterranean Sea. 2. Chemical oceanography. 3. Biogeochemical cycles. 4. Ocean circulation.
5. Ocean currents. I. Title.
GC651B57 2014
551.46ʹ138–dc23
2013042748
Front cover image: Time averages of Sea Level Anomalies (SLA) obtained from altimeter data. Red-Yellow tones indicate high values, Blue tones indicate low values. Top panel: Average SLA in the period 1993–1997. Bottom panel: Average SLA in the period 1997–2001. The figure represents the dynamical transition occurred in the central Mediterranean in 1997. Altimeter data represented in the cover were produced by Ssalto/Duacs and distributed by Aviso with support of CNES. Ssalto/Duacs, Aviso and CNES staffs are gratefully acknowledged for the services provided. Map: Courtesy of the Gian Luca Eusebi Borzelli, volume editor. Map of the region showing temporal and spatial variations in sea circulation patterns.
Sea: Carpe89. Beautiful landscape sea in Sardinia.
Cover design by Modern Alchemy LLC
This book is a tribute to our colleagues Allan Robinson and Volfango Rupolo.
Ali Aydoğdu
Institute of Marine Sciences, METU, Erdemli, Mersin, Turkey
Manuel Bensi
Istituto Nazionale di Oceanografia e di Geofisica Sperimentale (OGS), Sgonico (Trieste), Italy
Mireno Borghini
Istituto di Scienze Marine—ISMAR, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR), Lerici (SP), Italy
Harry Bryden
National Oceanography Centre Southampton, University of Southampton, Empress Dock, Southampton, United Kingdom; Istituto di Scienze Marine—ISMAR, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR), Venice, Italy
Vanessa Cardin
Istituto Nazionale di Oceanografia e di Geofisica Sperimentale (OGS), Sgonico (Trieste), Italy
Sotiria Georgiou
University of Athens, Athens, Greece
Isaac Gertman
Israel Oceanographic and Limnological Research, Haifa, Israel
Dagmar Hainbucher
Institut für Meereskunde, ZMAW, Universität Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany
Artur Hecht
Israel Oceanographic and Limnological Research, Haifa, Israel
R. Iacono
ENEA—C. R. Casaccia, Roma, Italy
Birgit Klein
Bundesanstalt für Seeschifffahrt und Hydrographie, Hamburg, Germany
Gerasimos Korres
Hellenic Center for Marine Research, Institute of Oceanography, Anavyssos, Greece
George Krokos
Hellenic Center for Marine Research, Institute of Oceanography, Anavyssos, Greece
Alex Lascaratos
University of Athens, Athens, Greece
Mohammed Abdul Latif
Institute of Marine Sciences, METU, Erdemli, Mersin, Turkey
L. Liberti
Istituto Superiore per la Protezione e la Ricerca Ambientale, Rome, Italy
Anneta Mantziafou
University of Athens, Athens, Greece
S. Marullo
ENEA—C. R. Frascati, Frascati, Italy
E. Napolitano
ENEA—C. R. Casaccia, Roma, Italy
Emin Özsoy
Institute of Marine Sciences, METU, Erdemli, Mersin, Turkey
Vassilis Papadopoulos
Hellenic Centre for Marine Research, Patras, Greece
Ananda Pascual
IMEDEA (CSIC-UIB), Esporles, Mallorca, Spain
L. Pratt
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, Massachusetts, USA
Wolfgang Roether
Institut für Umweltphysik, Univ. Bremen, Bremen, Germany
Angelo Rubino
Dipartimento di Scienze Ambientali, Informatica e Statistica, Universita' Ca' Foscari di Venezia, Venezia, Italy
Simón Ruiz
IMEDEA (CSIC-UIB), Esporles, Mallorca, Spain
J. C. Sánchez-Garrido
Grupo de Oceanografía Física. Dpto. Física Aplicada II, Campus de Teatinos, University of Malaga, Malaga, Spain
Gianmaria Sannino
Climate and Impact Modeling Lab—Energy and Environment Modeling Unit—ENEA, CR Casaccia, Rome, Italy
Katrin Schroeder
Istituto di Scienze Marine—ISMAR, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR), Venice, Italy
Sarantis Sofianos
University of Athens, Athens, Greece
Samuel Somot
MeteoFrance, Toulouse, France
Stefania Sparnocchia
Istituto di Scienze Marine—ISMAR, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR), Trieste, Italy
Alexander Theocharis
Hellenic Center for Marine Research, Institute of Oceanography, Anavyssos, Greece
Ersin Tutsak
Institute of Marine Sciences, METU, Erdemli, Mersin, Turkey
Dimitris Velaoras
Hellenic Center for Marine Research, Institute of Oceanography, Anavyssos, Greece
Anna Vetrano
Istituto di Scienze Marine—ISMAR, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR), Lerici (SP), Italy
Enrique Vidal-Vijande
IMEDEA (CSIC-UIB), Esporles, Mallorca, Spain
This book covers important issues of the Mediterranean dynamics. In this relatively small body of water, fundamental ocean processes, such as surface wind forcing, buoyancy fluxes, lateral mass exchange, and deep convection, take place analogously to the world ocean, but over shorter spatial and temporal scales, simplifying the logistics necessary for monitoring. This makes the Mediterranean a laboratory for processes characterizing the global ocean and its climate.
The 1980s represent a crossroad in the study of the Mediterranean Sea. Indeed, during the second half of the 1980s, several large-scale, long-term international experiments were conducted and provided a wealth of oceanographic information. Four large international programs—the Gibraltar Experiment, the Physical Oceanography of the Eastern Mediterranean, which in 1990 evolved into the fully interdisciplinary program named POEM-Biology and Chemistry (POEM-BC), the Western Mediterranean Circulation Experiment, and PRIMO—defined the major characteristics of the Mediterranean Sea. The picture of the Mediterranean variability emerging from this fieldwork was complex and showed that multiple interacting time and spatial scales (basin, subbasin, and mesoscale), representing a wide variety of physical processes, characterize the Mediterranean dynamics.
The aforementioned programs ended by the second half of the 1990s. Since then, although valuable studies were carried out, uncoordinated research efforts, driven mainly by national interests, provided fragmented and sporadic results.
To establish the state of the art of the research in the Mediterranean and allow interested scientists to interact, the Space Academy Foundation, a nonprofit organization to promote space-science, and technology, CIESM, and the OGS (Istituto Nazionale di Oceanografia e di Geofisica Sperimentale), under the aegis of the Alta Presidenza della Repubblica Italiana, organized a fully interdisciplinary meeting, which was held in Rome on 7–8 November 2011 at the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei. This book is the outcome of this effort and it is meant to be an important and original contribution to the knowledge of the phenomena that regulate the oceanography of the Mediterranean Sea.
Gian Luca Eusebi Borzelli, CERSE (Center for Remote Sensing of the Earth), Rome, Italy;
OGS (Istituto Nazionale di Oceanografia e di Geofisica Sperimenta), Italy
Miroslav Gačić, National Institute of Oceanography and Experimental Geophysics, Italy
Piero Lionello, University of Salento, Italy
Paola Malanotte-Rizzoli, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA