The Mediterranean has never been so hot
The Institute of Marine Sciences in Barcelona has issued a warning that during some surveys on 15 August, a record Mediterranean temperature of 28.9°C as a daily average was recorded. This thermal value exceeds the previous primate marked in July 2023 and equals 28.7°C.
But there’s worse. On the same 15th of August in El-Arish, Egypt, the record Mediterranean temperature reached 31.96°C. Preliminary readings for 2024 come from European Copernicus observations and confirm the Mediterranean basin as one of the seas most prone to summer heat waves.
“What is remarkable is not so much reaching a maximum in a given day, as observing a long period of high temperatures, even without breaking a record,” said Justino Martinez, a researcher at the Institute of Barcelona.
Since 2022, the surface temperatures of the Mediterranean have been abnormally elevated for long periods, confirming the problem associated with climate change.
Locally, water temperatures above 30 °C (4 °C above normal) were recorded along the coasts of Spain, France and Italy.
The oceans have absorbed 90% of the excess heat
Researchers highlight what has already emerged on World Oceans Day 2024: These large water basins absorb 90% of the excess heat produced by global warming and a third of carbon dioxide. They also produce up to 80% oxygen, applying a climate-regulating action thanks to the marine currents.
Overheating the oceans and the Mediterranean Sea will inevitably have repercussions on marine animal and plant life, causing the spread of invasive alien species and the migration of indigenous species.
Rising temperatures also undermine the ability of oceans and seas to absorb CO2, generating a vicious cycle that responds to global warming.
Increasing risk of Medicanes
But this summer showed another dramatic problem brought with it by the overheating of marine waters: the increasing possibility that cyclones with tropical characters, also known as medicanes, will also form in the Mediterranean.
“The marine trombies that derive from it travel conditioned by the distribution of heat on the sea and, if they reach the land, also from the topographic surface,” pointed out Giuseppe Mastronuzzi, Director of the Department of Earth Sciences and Geo-Environmental of the University of Bari. “There have always been but their frequency seems to have increased as well as their ability to produce damage has increased due to the high concentration of structures built along the coast exposed to their impact. The sinking of the Bayesan yacht and the loss of human lives is a sad result linked to the difficult management of these often sudden phenomena”. These are phenomena that occur with sea temperatures above 26°C which also corresponds to a warming of the lower part of the troposphere (9-14 km di quota). “Warm and humid air rising upward is subject to rotation due to the planet’s rotation. In the event that cold arctic air masses slide to low latitudes at high speed on the hot air masss it draws them upward like in a fireplace. It generates a very rapid cyclonic ascending circulation (in our hemisphere). The rapidly rising air masses rotate at a speed of about 100 km but also beyond and, rising up in height, cool and the water vapor condenses to generate intense and localized rains”, continues Mastronuzzi who then concludes by reiterating that “a sure remedy against these phenomena that we must imagine to be always present in the future is that of the correct territorial planning and the careful management of the coastal band”.