| AFFILIATIONS | - Alexandria University, Faculty of Science, Oceanography Department, Alexandria, Egypt
- University of Gothenburg, Department of Earth Sciences, Göteborg, Sweden
|
| ABSTRACT | The Eastern Mediterranean Basin (EMB) is economically an important area exploited as tourism, trade routes, fishers, use of the coastal zone as recreation area and offshore activities, including oil and gas extraction and offshore exploitation of renewable energy resources. The EMB is strongly affected by climate variability especially vulnerable to surface warming caused by the greenhouse emissions (e.g. carbon dioxide, water vapor, methane).
In order to understand the climate variability, the gridded ERA-Interim reanalyzed data extracted from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) for sea surface temperature (SST) and air temperature (T2m) are used to analyze the EMB climate change from 1979 to 2010. The characteristics of monthly, seasonal and yearly time series, monthly and annual averaged spatial distributions, monthly and annual linear trends are studied. Consequently, direct correlation between the North Atlantic Oscillation Index (NAOI) and the studied climate variables is examined. The analysis of this data is expected to present the current weather features that can be helpful for the stakeholders.
The results indicated that, the ERA-Interim data could describe the large-scale features (trends, averages and general circulation) of the EMB climate and show good agreements with observations, remote sensing and modeling techniques. Increasing SST and T2m are the most important changes. During the period of study, the annual average values (trends) of SST and T2m over the EMB would be 20.03±1.25 °C (0.39±0.1 °C/decade) and 18.79±1.52 °C (0.43±0.06 °C/decade). Finally, the studied climate variables are clearly linked with the NAOI. |