Climatological trend of sea surface salinity anomalies in the south eastern Mediterranean Sea

Abstract EN

Linear and quadratic regressions have been used to investigate the relationship between SSSA and time to get the general SSSA possible trends using a series of observed data of 63 years, for a limited geographic area (South Eastern Mediterranean Sea).

The results reveal a very slight increase of SSSA (salinification) with time of ~0.161/63 years (1948-2010) i.e.

~0.0026/yr.

The quadratic regression trend of the mean monthly SSSA has a parabola form.

It shows a decrease in SSSA in the period 1948 to 1980 then increasing forward.

Both negative (SSSA- ) and amplitude SSSA are developed in summer and early autumn, with maximum value during August (-0.63 and 0.98 respectively).

As for positive SSSA, the mean SSSA+ shows a slight development, with highest values in August (0.33).

Generally, there is an active period extended from July to October.

The annual distribution of SSSA shows some years with developing positive anomaly such as 1961, 1964, 1984 and 2006, while 1959, 1971, 1987 and 1991 can be considered as years of developing negative anomaly.

It is to be mentioned that the development of annual anomaly can be attributed to large individual value in a limited period of the year such as 1964+ and 1971- or lower values extend for many months such as 2006+ and 1996- .