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Concept
Mediterranean seas
Summary
A mediterranean sea (ˌmɛdɪtəˈreɪniən ) is, in oceanography, a mostly enclosed sea that has limited exchange of water with outer oceans and whose water circulation is dominated by salinity and temperature differences rather than by winds or tides. The eponymous Mediterranean Sea, for example, is almost completely enclosed by Europe, Asia, and Africa.
The namesake Mediterranean Seas, including the Black Sea, the Sea of Azov, the Aegean Sea (including the so called Thracian Sea and Sea of Crete), the Adriatic Sea, the Alboran Sea, the Ligurian Sea, the Balearic Sea, the Tyrrhenian Sea, the Ionian Sea, and the Sea of Marmara.
The Arctic Ocean (or Arctic Mediterranean Sea, which many regard as an ocean)
The American Mediterranean Sea: the combination of the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea.
The Baltic Sea
Baffin Bay
The Persian Gulf
The Red Sea
The Australasian Mediterranean Sea (including the Banda, Sulu, Sulawesi and Java Seas)
There are two types of Mediterranean sea.
A concentration basin has a higher salinity than the outer ocean due to evaporation, and its water exchange consists of inflow of the fresher oceanic water in the upper layer and outflow of the saltier Mediterranean water in the lower layer of the connecting channel.
The Red Sea
The Persian Gulf
The Eurafrican Mediterranean Sea is also a concentration basin as a whole, but the Black Sea and the Adriatic Sea are dilution basins (see below) owing to the Danube, Don, and Dnieper Rivers and the Po River respectively.
A dilution basin has a lower salinity due to freshwater gains such as rainfall and rivers, and its water exchange consists of outflow of the fresher Mediterranean water in the upper layer and inflow of the saltier oceanic water in the lower layer of the channel. Renewal of deep water may not be sufficient to supply oxygen to the bottom.
The Arctic Ocean
The American Mediterranean Sea
The Baltic Sea
Baffin Bay
The Black Sea
The Australasian Mediterranean Sea
The Hudson Bay is so shallow it functions like a huge estuary.
Official source
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Drainage basin
A drainage basin is an area of land where all flowing surface water converges to a single point, such as a river mouth, or flows into another body of water, such as a lake or ocean. A basin is separated from adjacent basins by a perimeter, the drainage divide, made up of a succession of elevated features, such as ridges and hills. A basin may consist of smaller basins that merge at river confluences, forming a hierarchical pattern. Other terms for a drainage basin are catchment area, catchment basin, drainage area, river basin, water basin, and impluvium.
Adriatic Sea
The Adriatic Sea (ˌeɪdriˈætᵻk) is a body of water separating the Italian Peninsula from the Balkan Peninsula. The Adriatic is the northernmost arm of the Mediterranean Sea, extending from the Strait of Otranto (where it connects to the Ionian Sea) to the northwest and the Po Valley. The countries with coasts on the Adriatic are Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Italy, Montenegro, and Slovenia. The Adriatic contains more than 1,300 islands, mostly located along the Croatian part of its eastern coast.
Inland sea
An inland sea (also known as an epeiric sea or an epicontinental sea) is a continental body of water which is very large in area and is either completely surrounded by dry land or connected to an ocean by a river, strait or "arm of the sea". An inland sea will generally have higher salinity than a freshwater lake, but usually lower salinity than seawater. As with other seas, inland seas experience tidality governed by the orbits of the Moon and Sun. What constitutes an "inland sea" is complex and somewhat necessarily vague.