Interannual Variations of Sea Surface Temperature in the Black Sea

This study uses high-resolution blended anomaly data from The United States (US) National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in order to analyze Sea Surface Temperature (SST) variability in the Black Sea over the 1981-2015 period. The linear regression indicates that there has been a slight increase in SST with a rate of 0.04±0.005 °C/yr during this all period. However, the results show that there was a surface cooling in the 1980s followed by the strong warming after this period. Since 1990s, especially for summer sea water temperatures have been consistently higher than those of previous years. On the other hand, the observed sea level rise during 1993-1999 and 2008-2014 is highly correlated with sea surface temperature. Furthermore, monthly averages of the SST anomalies reveal that the maximum SST in the Black Sea occurs in August, while its minimum occurs in January-March. The amplitudes of the annual and the semi-annual cycles of SST anomalies are about 0.8 °C and 0.2 °C, respectively.