Temperatures in the Mediterranean have broken records for the second year in a row, threatening marine life, encouraging invasive species and increasing the potential for intense rainfall in a region particularly hard hit by the effects of global warming.
On August 15, the average daily surface temperature of the Mediterranean Sea reached an unprecedented 28.90°C, breaking the record of 28.71°C set on July 24, 2023, said Justino Martinez, a researcher at the Institute of Marine Sciences (ICM) in Barcelona and the Catalan institute ICATMAR.
These preliminary data are based on satellite data from the European Copernicus Observatory’s Marine Service dating back to 1982.
“The maximum temperature on August 15 was reached on the Egyptian coast, in El Arish (31.96°C),” but “this value should be treated with caution” before further human verification, Justino Martinez said.
For two summers in a row, the Mediterranean will be hotter than the unprecedentedly scorching summer of 2003, when an average daily temperature of 28.25°C was recorded on August 23, a record that has stood for the past twenty years.
The new record comes after a hot July across much of the Mediterranean basin, which has also been hit by heat waves, droughts and fires similar to those in Greece.
According to Justino Martínez, the record was also broken for the average daily temperature (28.56°C on August 15 this year, compared to 28.40°C on July 24, 2023), but this indicator is less relevant than the average temperature, since it was more strongly influenced by very atypical readings in isolated parts of the Mediterranean.
At the moment, “what’s remarkable is not so much reaching a maximum on a given day, but seeing a long period of such high temperatures,” Justino Martinez explained on Tuesday, when the record set in 2023 was just broken.
“Since 2022, surface temperatures have been abnormally high for a long period, even taking into account climate change,” he added.
However, the 2023 record was broken this year almost three weeks later, when surface temperatures typically begin to drop in late August.
The Mediterranean region has long been classified as a climate change “hotspot” by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Author: Lusa
Source: CM Jornal
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