| ABSTRACT | The global surface temperature increase has slowed over the past 16 years, but the ocean heat uptake is observed to penetrate deep into the Atlantic Oceans during this recent hiatus of the global warming. The North Atlantic and Mediterranean Sea have to be seen as a unique system, therefore the North Atlantic variability has allegedly an impact on the Mediterranean basin. For to understand the impact of the today climate variability, like hiatus, is relevant to tracking the ocean heat uptake at different levels in the Mediterranean Sea, but before to do this, is necessary to conceive their impact on key mechanisms that are at the base of its own variability. The Mediterranean Sea is a marginal sea with peculiar characteristics where the more relevant aspect is the role of the straits that functioning not only as valves of salt or freshwater but have a barrier role in the transport of momentum and heat and salt between the several sub-basins. More specifically the Strait of Sicily separates the Mediterranean basin in two main sub-basins eastern and western respectively with intrinsic different oceanographic and climate characteristics. During this talk will be discussed in the broad perspective for the climate change of the Mediterranean Sea the recent numerical results and observations that having highlighted how are different the mechanisms that drive the main circulation of the eastern and western ocean circulation. Underlining for example the role of mixing in the abyssal circulation of the Ionian basin and modelling results showing that the meridional overturning circulation of the Eastern Mediterranean has multiple equilibria states and hysteresis behaviour of deep-water formation under present day-like conditions. Moreover, the water exchange between the Aegean and the Adriatic Seas can drastically affects these states in the case in which they were perturbed by temperature or salinity anomalies, demonstrating some concern about the vulnerability of the Mediterranean basin under specific condition of temperature and salinity anomalies generated by the climate change of the global ocean and more specifically of the Mediterranean Sea-North Atlantic ocean system. |