Warming, salting and origin of the Tyrrhenian Deep Water

Abstract

Data collected from 1996 to 2001 down to 3,500 m in the Tyrrhenian sub‐basin with ship‐handled and moored instruments show 5‐year T and S trends (0.016 °C/yr, 0.008/yr) that are the largest ever evidenced in Mediterranean deep waters. This is not consistent with the usual hypothesis that Tyrrhenian Deep Water (TDW) is a mixture of eastern water flowing from the Sicily Channel and western water flowing from the Sardinia Channel partly since both are reported to encounter lower trends. We argue that TDW might result from a dense water formation process occurring within the Tyrrhenian itself, in a region never reported up to now, east of the Bonifacio Strait. Whatever the validity of our hypothesis, climatic changes are occurring in the whole sea and are efficiently specified with long time series.