About the project
The Mediterranean Sea is a climate change hotspot, implicated in the recent dramatic warming and drying of the regional climate. This project will investigate how changes in surface Mediterranean waters and marine heatwaves are related to increasingly extreme weather and to shifts in the character and flows of underlying waters.
Through summer of 2023, countries around the Mediterranean were subject to extreme marine 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.
Around Cyprus, surface waters reach high salinity through excessive evaporation in the Levantine basin, preconditioning the formation of Levantine Intermediate Water (LIW), which controls the Mediterranean Zonal Overturning Circulation (MZOC) and subsequently the whole Mediterranean climate. Associating MZOC streamlines with temperature and salinity, we can align this circulation, and variability thereof, with ongoing marked changes in the regional hydrological cycle and air-sea heat exchange.
Three leading questions are:
- how do changing water cycle/air-sea heat fluxes impact sea surface conditions, water mass formation and hence the MZOC?
- how do marine and atmospheric heatwaves develop, interact, and intensify in the Mediterranean region under an increasingly warming/drying climate
- to what extent are recent weather extremes in the Mediterranean region attributable to marine heatwaves through fast rising SST and evaporation rates?
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. The project will provide insight as to how we expect future changes in Mediterranean Sea water cycle and air-sea heat exchange will affect the regional climate and drive extreme weather conditions.
You will also be supervised by organisations other than the University of Southampton, including Prof Simon Josey from the National Oceanography Centre.
