Seasonal heat budget of the Mediterranean Sea

Abstract

We calculate the monthly components of the Mediterranean Sea heat budget, namely the net shortwave, net longwave, latent, sensible heat fluxes, and heat storage change, for years 1984–2000. The radiative components of the seasonal heat budget are derived by a radiation transfer model, while in most other studies bulk formulae are used. A variety of data are required to run the model, among which are cloud data from International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project (ISCCP) D2 data set, aerosol data from Global Aerosol Data Set (GADS), temperature and humidity from National Center for Environmental Prediction/National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCEP/NCAR) and European Centre for Medium‐range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) Re‐Analysis (ERA‐40), and oceanographical data from Mediterranean Data Archaeology and Rescue (MEDAR) MEDATLAS database and the World Ocean Atlas 2001. We compare two methods for the estimation of the monthly latent heat flux and evaporation: the bulk aerodynamic and the heat balance. The average annual evaporation rate for the Mediterranean Sea, based on the heat balance method, is estimated at 1500 ± 190 mm yr−1. The bulk aerodynamic method produces estimates of the annual evaporation rate in the range 1060–1280 mm yr−1, depending on the source of the input data. The analysis of the heat content shows that the solar heat absorbed by the sea during summer is redistributed to winter evaporation via heat storage by the sea. Thus the peak evaporation occurs in winter and is mainly driven by energy released (100–150 Wm−2) from sea heat storage.

Regional and global significance of Pliocene sea surface temperatures from the Gulf of Cadiz (Site U1387) and the Mediterranean

“…1) (Bakun and Agostini, 2001;Garrett et al, 1993;Matsoukas et al, 2005). On orbital timescales the precessionally-paced shift in the reach of the African monsoon can greatly affect the temperature and salinity of the surface Mediterranean (Rossignol-Strick, 1985;Tuenter et al, 2003).…”

Potential evaporation trends over land between 1983–2008: driven by radiative fluxes or vapour-pressure deficit?

“…There, a series of sensitivity tests were performed to investigate how much uncertainty is introduced in the model DLR by uncertainties in the input parameters, such as air temperature, skin temperature, low, middle or high cloud amount as well as the cloud physical thickness, cloud overlap schemes, and the use of daily-mean instead of monthly-mean input data. The model DLR was also validated against BSRN station measurements for the entire globe Matsoukas et al, 2005). Here, we use a newer version with an improved spectral resolution of 28 bands for the longwave spectrum.…”

“…Priority three, because our period of study extends well beyond 1990. In Matsoukas et al (2005Matsoukas et al ( , 2007, we touched upon priority five, but due to lack of inter-annual, spatially distributed heat storage data in the oceans, the trend of general ocean evaporation is beyond our reach.…”

Factors Regulating the Air–Sea Heat Fluxes Regime over the Aegean Sea

“…13). The radiative components are considered as the main source of the heat gain by the sea, especially during the warm season (Matsoukas et al 2005;Bond and Cronin 2008;Weller et al 2008;Ghate et al 2009). Nevertheless, their anomalies exhibit a very narrow fluctuation over time in the Aegean Sea.…”