It is not only heat records that will be broken on land this summer. The Mediterranean is currently being ravaged by an immense underwater heat wave. “In some places it is more than 5 degrees Celsius warmer than average,” reports British weather forecaster Scott Duncan, who monitors record temperatures around the world. Off our own coast, the temperature is up to 3 degrees higher than average.
According to Duncan, the “immense and relentless” marine heatwave in the Mediterranean is caused by the unusual heat that has captivated Europe since the beginning of May. Since then, there has actually been an unprecedentedly high average surface water temperature in the Mediterranean.
The west of the Mediterranean is especially affected. This is a Category 3 marine heat wave, which is described as “severe” according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) classification. For comparison: category 1 is “moderate”, category 2 is “strong”, category 4 is “extreme” and category 5 is “more than extreme”.
Corsica
According to the French weather station ‘La Chaîne Météo’, the temperature of the seawater off the coast of Corsica and Nice rose to no less than 30 degrees Celsius on Friday, which are “tropical values”.
La Chaine Meteo
@lachainemeteo
NOAA maps also show that the temperature of the surface water off our own coast is higher than average, up to 3 degrees Celsius.
A few degrees warmer than average may not seem like much, but it is. After all, water heats up much slower than air.
Underwater heat waves can cause considerable damage. After all, long and intense marine heat waves have a devastating effect on marine ecosystems.
They also have an effect on the weather over land. The warmer water makes the air cool less, which can cause even more extreme heat waves over land. It can also cause heavier precipitation in late summer and early autumn.
jellyfish
The longest marine heat wave on record lasted from 2013 to 2016 and wreaked havoc in the northeast Pacific. The entire ecosystem in the area was disrupted. Thousands of birds died, the number of jellyfish increased enormously and harmful algae also got a boost, which in turn resulted in the poisoning of marine mammals.
To this day, scientists are still discovering new effects of that marine heat wave or blob. For example on kelp forests, large collections of algae below sea level. Some kelp forests suffered little from the heat wave and others devastatingly. A recent study now shows that in some areas environmental factors exacerbated the effect of the heat wave, such as the presence of sea urchins.
Six years after the blob the ecosystem in the Northeast Pacific has still not fully recovered.
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