PLEASE NOTE: Application deadline date 08 Jan 2024. Applications are no longer being accepted for this project
Project Overview
The Mediterranean Sea is a climate change hotspot, implicated in the dramatic warming and drying of regional climate. This project will link changes in surface Mediterranean waters to increasingly extreme weather, to shifts in the character and flows of underlying salty waters, and to far-reaching influences on the North Atlantic.
Project Description
Through summer of 2023, countries around the Mediterranean were subject to extreme heatwaves followed by extreme rainfall and floods. The unprecedented events of 2023 followed upward trends in surface warming and evaporation over recent decades, raising sea surface temperatures and salinities (SST and SSS) across the region with sometimes dramatic consequences [1]. Around Cyprus, surface waters reach high salinity through excessive evaporation in the Levantine basin, preconditioning the formation of Levantine Intermediate Water (LIW), which eventually departs the Mediterranean through the Straits of Gibraltar as part of an ‘overturning’ circulation [2] – the Mediterranean Zonal Overturning Circulation (MZOC). Exported to the North Atlantic, this high-salinity water is consequential for the large-scale circulation of that ocean. Associating MZOC streamlines with temperature and salinity, we can align this circulation, and variability thereof, with ongoing marked changes in the regional hydrological cycle [3] and air-sea heat exchange. Three leading questions are:
(1) To what extent are weather extremes in the Mediterranean region attributable to rising SST and evaporation rates?
(2) How do weather extremes impact sea surface conditions, water mass formation and hence the MZOC?
(3) How might changes in SSS, Med Water and the MZOC impact the wider North Atlantic?
Befitting its name, the Mediterranean Sea occupies the middle of a coupled climate system, connected to the wider ocean circulation and a fragile regional climate system The project will provide insight as to how we expect future changes in Mediterranean Sea will affect both regional weather and the wider ocean circulation in the Atlantic.
The INSPIRE DTP programme provides comprehensive personal and professional development training alongside extensive opportunities for students to expand their multi-disciplinary outlook through interactions with a wide network of academic, research and industrial/policy partners. The student will be registered at the University of Southampton and hosted at the University of Southampton/SOES.
Specific training will include: (1) experience with a range of programming languages (Python, Matlab, Ferret) to access and analyse a diverse range of data (satellite-derived and in-situ observational databases; regional and sub-regional operational ocean forecasts/re-analyses; high-resolution coupled climate model historical simulations and future projections), to evaluate variability and links between properties and overturning circulation; (2) use of Lagrangian diagnostic tools to trace surface, intermediate and deep waters. The student will present research findings at major national/international conferences. They may have opportunities to work with regional partners to develop systems for monitoring water properties and flows in the eastern Mediterranean.
[1] Schroeder, K., Chiggiato, J., Josey, S. A., Borghini, M., Aracri, S., and Sparnocchia, S. (2017). Rapid response to climate change in a marginal sea. Sci. Rep. 7, 4065. doi: 10.1038/ s41598-017-04455-5
[2] Pinardi, N., et al. (2023). Chapter 7 - Dense and deep water formation processes and Mediterranean overturning circulation, Editor(s): Katrin Schroeder, Jacopo Chiggiato, Oceanography of the Mediterranean Sea, Elsevier, pp. 209-261.
[3] Skliris, N., Zika, J., Herold, L. A., Josey, S., and R. Marsh (2018). Mediterranean Sea water budget long-term trend inferred from salinity observations. Climate Dynamics, 51, 2857-2876. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-017-4053-7
