Eddy Kinetic Energy Variability From 30 Years of Altimetry in the Mediterranean Sea
Abstract. Mesoscale activity plays a central role in ocean variability, substantially influencing the mixing of biogeophysical tracers, such as heat and carbon, and driving changes in ecosystems. Eddy Kinetic Energy (EKE), a metric used for studying the intensity of mesoscale processes, has recently been shown to increase in regions of intense EKE worldwide. Strong EKE positive trends are observed, for example, in the principal western boundary current regions, such as the Gulf Stream, Kuroshio Extension, and the Brazil/Malvinas Confluence. In this study, we assess whether the Mediterranean Sea, known to be a hotspot for climate change impacts, also exhibits such intensification. Despite the high number of observational data and modeling experiments, there is a gap in understanding the long-term evolution of mesoscale dynamics and EKE trends in the Mediterranean Sea. This study investigates EKE trends in the Mediterranean Sea using daily geostrophic currents derived from satellite altimetric data. To test the robustness of the results, we compare EKE trends computed from three different gridded altimetric products: a global product derived from a stable two-satellite constellation (two-sat) and two other products (global and European) incorporating all available satellites (all-sat). While all products reveal a general increase in EKE in the Mediterranean Sea over the last three decades, the trends calculated from the two-sat product are significantly smaller than those computed from the all-sat products. We show that this discrepancy is strongly linked to the increasing number of satellites over time used to construct the all-sat data sets, which enhances both spatial and temporal coverage, and hence, their capacity to detect higher energy levels. To evaluate the fidelity of these gridded products in capturing EKE trends, we compare them with along-track data in high-energy regions of the Mediterranean Sea: the Alboran Sea and the Ierapetra area. These regions exhibit contrasting EKE trends: positive in the Alboran Sea and negative in the Ierapetra area. These findings highlight the importance of using altimetric products with a stable number of satellites constructed for climate applications when addressing long-term ocean variability analysis.
 
 
                         
                         
                         
                        



 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                
Eddy Kinetic Energy (EKE) is a widely used metric for ocean currents variability, enabling to monitor them using remote-sensing, particularly through altimetry since 1993. Some earlier studies reported increasing trends in EKE worldwide, which was not yet extensively studied in the Mediterranean Sea. The authors explored the sensibility to the increasing number of altimetric satellites. Section 3.2 explores the differences between all-sat and two-sat Level 4 products ; section 3.3 asserts the results by comparison with along-tracks Level 3 data ; section 4 provides an insight of the statistics using the META eddy atlas.
The method provides an insight to altimetry products biases, often curtailed in many mesoscale studies. The results are quite interesting as they show the number of satellites drives a strong bias on observed long-term trends, in EKE but also potentially on individual eddy detections. They showed that while an EKE trend might appear over the Mediterranean Sea in all-sat product, this is actually not significant using two-sat timeseries. Figure 5 in particular is very interesting - and might be further highlighted - as a mapped sensitivity of satellite sampling.
Section 3,4 using META eddy detections is interesting as it asserts the previous results with eddies statistics. It seems however to stay under-used, as it introduces a totally different dataset for 15 lines of development. I recommend extending this section to illustrates other regions and stregnthen the robustness of the statistics, and also make distinction between cyclones and anticyclone (not possible using EKE only).
A major concern arises about the regions of application, as the study focuses on 2 limited energetic regions to assess its results. These areas (Alboran & Ierapetra) are known to be energetic because of the presence of a single (or two) recurrent mesoscale structures. In the particular case of Ierapetra the reported results seem to be a shift of the structure.
Major comment :
Additional comments :