Air–Sea Interaction: Heat and Fresh-Water Fluxes in the Aegean Sea

The Aegean Sea is an intriguing sub-basin of the Mediterranean, due to (a) its capability to produce large amounts of very dense water, temporarily becoming the major producer of Eastern Mediterranean Bottom Water (recorded during the EMT period) and (b) due to its direct connection with the Black Sea that supplies the Aegean Sea with light, low-salinity waters which contribute buoyancy to the surface layers, and potentially control local convection processes. Thus, a similarity with the North Atlantic rises, in the sense of gradually increased stratification due to the addition of low-salinity surface waters, in an area capable to produce very dense waters, and thus possibly turning the North Aegean to a natural laboratory for studying such intriguing processes. The buoyancy exchanges with the atmosphere over the Aegean basin are partially controlled by the buoyancy gain and the subsequent formation of a shallow surface layer of the modified Black Sea waters. In this chapter, we examine the characteristics and variability of the heat and freshwater and the overall buoyancy fluxes with the exchanges with the atmosphere, focusing on the potential role of the interaction with the Black Sea.