Atlas of 3D Eddies in the Mediterranean Sea from 2000 to 2017

Atlas of mesoscale eddies and their 3D characterization in the Mediterranean Sea for the years 2000-2017. This data-set was obtained from the dynamical analysis of the geostrophic surface currents time-series provided by DUACS/AVISO (https://duacs.cls.fr/) and computed from the delayed-time Absolute Dynamical Topography maps at 1/8°. First, the cyclogeostrophic velocity field was computed from the geostrophic surface current in order to take into account the ageostrophic velocity components induced by the streamlines curvature. Such correction might be significant for a few long-lived anticyclones in the Mediterranean, such as the Iearapetra anticyclone (Ioannou et al. 2017 https//doi: 10.1002/2017JC013158.). The Angular Momentum Eddy Detection and tracking Algorithm (AMEDA; Le Vu et al. 2018 https://doi.org/10.1175/JTECH-D-17-0010.1) was then applied to the cyclogeostrophic velocity field. This optimized algorithm provides several dynamical characteristics of the detected eddies and the tracking procedure identifies the merging and the splitting events. It allows an accurate tracking of long-lived eddies that might experience several eddy-eddy interactions during their lifetime. An estimation of the vertical structure of a several eddies is obtain from the identification of the Argo profiles of the Coriolis data-base (http://www.coriolis.eu.org) which surface inside the detected eddies. The DYNED-Atlas-Med data base provides depth-interpolated Temperature, Salinity and Density profile both inside and outside the detected eddies. Besides, following Pegliasco et al., 2015 (https://doi.org/10.1002/2015JC010950), a background profile is computed from a climatological average (+/-30 days whatever the year) of all the profiles outside the detected eddies. These background profiles allows to estimate the hydrological anomalies and their vertical extend within several eddy cores.