SPATIAL AND TEMPORAL SEA-SURFACE TEMPERATURE COVARIANCES IN THE MEDITERRANEAN

Using sea-surface temperature data for the, post-war period, the Mediterranean Sea is divided objectively (principal components factor analysis) into subareas with similar covariances. This division is not the same in every season of the year. In summer, two subareas are found, the west and the east. In spring and autumn three, and in winter four significant subareas denote physical oceanographic and meteorological processes. The scores of the analyses show clearly the minimum of the late 1970s and then the warming of recent years somewhat delayed in the eastern Mediterranean.