1. Atlantic surface water flows into the Mediterranean Sea through the upper layer of the Gibraltar Strait and mixes with WMB surface selleck water. Part of the surface WMB water then flows through the upper layer of the Sicily Channel to the EMB and mixes with EMB surface water. Net precipitation and river discharge influence the

water and heat balances in both sub-basins as well as the exchange with the Black Sea. In the winter, convection occurs because of the negative water balance in certain areas of the northern EMB, forming the deep-water outflow through the Sicily Channel to the WMB (Zervakis et al., 2000). This lower flow together with deep-water formation in the Gulf of Lion (in the northern WMB) is responsible for the dense water outflow through the Gibraltar Strait to the Atlantic Ocean. The Mediterranean Sea’s large-scale inverse estuarine circulation is driven

by the water balance, causing dense bottom-water formation due to strong evaporation and outflowing dense water through the Sicily Channel and Gibraltar Strait into the Atlantic Ocean, with compensating for Atlantic Ocean surface water flowing into the Mediterranean Sea. The present version of the model uses the PROBE equation solver for the Mediterranean Sea called PROBE-MED Selleckchem Stem Cell Compound Library version 2.0. PROBE-MED version 2.0 focuses on such processes as diapycnal mixing, inverse estuarine circulation, and land–air–sea interactions in the Mediterranean Sea. The exchange through the Strait of Messina Masitinib (AB1010) and Suez Canal are neglected as they are smaller than the exchange through the Sicily Channel and Gibraltar Strait. The Black Sea is treated as a river flow into the EMB, as in the earlier study (Shaltout

and Omstedt, 2012). Consequently in- and outflows are addressed by the exchange through the Gibraltar Strait and Sicily Channel. The Black Sea together with, in order of declining importance, the Nile, Po, Ceyhan, Adige, Drin, Vjose, Marista, Buyuk Menderes, and Shkumbini rivers are considered the dominant sources of fresh water to the EMB with a combined annual mean discharge of 11,209 m3 s−1. The decreasing freshwater flows from the Black Sea and the River Nile play a significant role in the increasing salinity of the EMB: Black Sea discharge decreased by 9.8 × 10 m3 s−1 yr−1 from 1958 to 2009 due to decreasing net precipitation (Shaltout and Omstedt, 2012 and Stanev and Peneva, 2002), while the Nile River discharge was reduced by a factor of more than two after the Aswan high dam was built in 1964 (Ludwig et al., 2009). The Rhone, Ebro, Tiber, Jucar, Cheliff, Moulouya, Mejerdah, and Tafna rivers are considered the dominant sources of fresh water to the WMB with an annual mean discharge of 2811 m3 s−1. Mediterranean Sea deep water forms in the winter because of evaporation and heat losses. The Adriatic, Aegean, and Levantine sub-basins are the significant sources of EMB deep water (Malanotte-Rizzoli et al., 1999).