Physical oceanographic parameters of temperature and salinity were acquired from EMODnet Physics portal at each sampling location. EMODnet Physics portal a gridded data set with a resolution of 12 Km of mean monthly averages from 1900 to year 2013 (Simoncelli et al., 2015; doi:10.12770/ad07a55f-5de7-4abc-ba89-8899b16c4b59). The data set is in NetCDF format and was managed with Panoply Data Viewer. Surface water (0 m) temperature and salinity values for each core-top location were extracted from the corresponding grid. Seawater density was subsequently for calculated from the temperature and salinity data (at 0 m) using the equation of state of the water.