Seasonal and Spatial Variation in Sea Surface Temperature in the South-East Mediterranean Sea

A seven-year dataset of Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer-Sea Surface Temperature AVHRR-SST during (1998-2004) was used to study the annual and seasonal variability in Sea Surface Temperature in the Levantine Basin of the Eastern Mediterranean Sea. The time analysis revealed the presence of a strong seasonal signal characterized by two main seasonal extremes, winter and summer. The transition between the winter and the summer occurs very rapidly in May and October. The space analysis shows that the dominant scale is the sub-basin scale and the sub-basin gyres are very well resolved allowing the identification of permanent and semi permanent structures. The seasonal and monthly SST distributions are strongly correlated with the dynamical structure of the basin upper thermocline circulation. Furthermore, comparison of the SST monthly climatologies with the POEM circulation scheme shows that all the major currents and the sub-basin gyres are also found consistently in our patterns. A general warming trend appeared in the time series of SST data, and the seasonal cycles and their linear fit, suggesting an increase of about 0.5 o C in 7 years, although during the period under consideration, no systematic increase or decrease of the maximum summer SST was observed. This increase is essentially due to a steady rise of winter (December, January, February, and March). Keywords: SST; spatial; seasonal; mesoscale; AVHRR, gyre, eddy