Ž . Dynamics of Atmospheres and Oceans 29 1999 365–395 www.elsevier.comrlocaterdynatmoce The Eastern Mediterranean in the 80s and in the 90s: the big transition in the intermediate and deep circulations Paola Malanotte-Rizzoli a, ) , Beniamino B. Manca b , Maurizio Ribera d’Alcala c , Alexander Theocharis d , Stephen Brenner e , Giorgio Budillon f , Emin Ozsoy g a Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA b ( ) OsserÕatorio Geofisico Sperimentale OGS , Trieste, Italy c Stazione Zoologica ‘ A. Dohrn’, Naples, Italy d ( ) National Centre for Marine Research NCMR , Athens, Greece e ( ) Israel Oceanographic Limnological Research IOLR , Haifa, Israel f ( ) Istituto UniÕersitario NaÕale IUN , Naples, Italy g ( ) Middle East Technical UniÕersity METU , Institute of Marine Sciences, Erdemli, Turkey Received 27 August 1998; received in revised form 16 February 1999; accepted 23 February 1999 Abstract We present definitive observational evidence that the startling change of the Eastern Mediter- w ranean deep circulation observed in winter 1995 and documented by Roether, W., Manca, B.B., Klein, B., Bregant, D., Georgopoulos, D., Beitzel, V., Kovacevich, V., Luchetta, A., 1996. Recent x changes in the Eastern Mediterranean deep water. Science 271, 333–335. actually started before October 1991. This change involved not only the deep water mass pathways but also the origin and pathways of the water mass spreading in the intermediate layer. We carry out the first unified analysis of the POEMBC-O91 data set, which shows that, differently from the previous decade of the 80s, the CretanrAegean Sea was in 1991 the ‘driving’ engine of the intermediate, transitional Ž . and deep layer circulations, with Cretan Intermediate Water CIW , transitional water and Cretan Ž . Deep Water CDW spreading out from the Cretan Sea into the basin interior. The most important Ž. Ž . new results are: a the Levantine Intermediate Water LIW formed inside or at the periphery of ) Corresponding author 0377-0265r99r$ - see front matter q 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. Ž . PII: S0377-0265 99 00011-1