Mediterranean Sea level Variability in Relation to Tidal and Meteorological Forces

. Ten sea level tide Gauge stations are analyzed to investigate sea level variability dynamics at the Mediterranean Sea covering the 2009-2012 period. The analyses are based on separate tidal and non-tidal part from observed sea level using classical harmonic analysis to show weather part is significantly contributing the observations. Sea level is corrected to the effect of mean sea level pressure and then, examined with North Atlantic Oscillation, bartropic flow through Gibraltar strait, net precipitation, sea surface temperature and 10m-wind speed components to build an understanding tool of the Mediterranean Sea level dynamics. The results indicate that the Mediterranean Sea level is subjected to different forces from station to another. Tidal sea level (mean sea level correction) variance displays up to 84.1% (38.8%) of the observed sea level variance. At all the studied stations, tidal and non-tidal part display same weight of observed monthly sea level. Mediterranean Sea level variations is affected by several factors where the tidal, mean sea level pressure, bartropic flow through Gibraltar strait and net precipitation dominates.

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