The sea surface temperature of the Mediterranean Sea reached an all-time high last week, beating the previous record set during the summer of 2023 to hit 28.9°C.
For the second consecutive summer, the Mediterranean Sea has breached the 28.25°C mark, a long-standing temperature record set in 2003, during one of the hottest summers in the Mediterranean Basin since records began.
In July 2023, a new record median sea surface temperature was set at 28.71ºC, but scientists at Spain’s largest marine sciences institute have now reported that this figure was surpassed in mid-August 2024.
“The maximum temperature on 15th August was attained on the Egyptian coast at El-Arish (31.96ºC),” said Justino Martinez, a researcher at the Institut de Ciències del Mar in Barcelona and the Catalan Institute of Research for the Governance of the Sea in comments to AFP.
He added, “The maximum sea surface temperature record was [also] broken in the Mediterranean Sea… with a daily median of 28.90ºC.”
Local highs
In early August, a Météo-France marine weather buoy recorded sea surface temperatures in the waters between Nice and Calvi of over 30°C – a full 4°C above the seasonal average for this zone.
“30°C is serious,” Jean-Pierre Gattuso, the CNRS Research Director at the Villefranche-sur-Mer Oceanography Laboratory and a co-author of an IPCC report on climate change, told France Bleu Azur. “It’s not a surprise; the increase in the frequency of marine heatwaves was predicted by the IPCC. In 2019, we published a report showing that if we continue to emit greenhouse gases into the atmosphere at the current rate, these marine heatwaves will occur 50 times more frequently.”
According to data published by the United Nations’ Environment Programme, the Mediterranean region is warming 20% faster than the global average. Indeed, the water temperature in the Basin is expected to rise by between 1.8°C and 3.5°C by 2100, with already identified hotspots in Spain and in the Eastern Mediterranean.
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