The Mediterranean Sea reached its highest temperature on record on Thursday, Spanish researchers told AFP, breaking the record from July 2023.
"The maximum sea surface temperature record was broken in the Mediterranean Sea yesterday... with a daily median of 28.90C," Spain's leading institute of marine sciences said.
The previous record occurred on July 24, 2023, with a median value of 28.71C, said Justino Martinez, researcher at the Institut de Ciencies del Mar in Barcelona and the Catalan Institute of Research for the Governance of the Sea.
"The maximum temperature on 15 August was attained on the Egyptian coast at El-Arish (31.96C)," but this value is preliminary until further human checks can be carried out, he added.
These preliminary findings are taken from satellite data from the European Union's Copernicus Earth observation programme.
It means that for two successive summers the Mediterranean will have been warmer than during the exceptional summer heatwave of 2003, when a daily median was measured at 28.25C on 23 August, a record that had stood for twenty years.
"What is remarkable is not so much to reach a maximum on a given day, but to observe a long period of high temperatures, even without breaking a record," Martinez told AFP earlier this week.
Such temperatures threaten marine life.
During earlier heatwaves about 50 species including corals and molluscs were decimated.
Global warming
The Mediterranean region has long been classified as a hotspot of climate change.
Oceans have absorbed 90 percent of the excess heat produced by human activity since the dawn of the industrial age, according to scientists.
This excess heat continues to accumulate as greenhouse gases, mainly from burning oil, gas and coal.
The overheating of the oceans is predicted to impact marine plant and animal life, including on the migration of certain species and the spread of invasive species.
This could threaten fish stocks and thus undermine food security in certain parts of the globe.
Warmer oceans are also less capable of absorbing carbon dioxide (CO2), reinforcing the vicious cycle of global warming.
(AFP)
