Characterization of the Atlantic Water and Levantine Intermediate Water in the Mediterranean Sea using 20 years of Argo data

Atlantic Water (AW) and Levantine Intermediate Water (LIW) are important water masses that play a crucial role in the internal variability of the Mediterranean thermohaline circulation. To be more specific, their variability and interaction, along with other water masses that characterize the Mediterranean basin, such as the Western Mediterranean Deep Water (WMDW), contribute to modify the Mediterranean Outflow through the Strait of Gibraltar, and hence they may influence the stability of the global thermohaline circulation. This work aims to characterize AW and LIW in the Mediterranean Sea, taking advantage of the large observational dataset (freely available on https://argo.ucsd.edu, https://www.ocean-ops.org, last access: 17 January 2022; Wong et al., 2020) provided by Argo floats from 2001 to 2019. AW and LIW were identified using different diagnostic methods, highlighting the inter-basin variability and the strong zonal gradient that both denote the two water masses in this margin...