The data also shows that almost the entire Mediterranean is suffering from a marine heat wave. Last Friday August 2 a buoy off Dragonera, in Mallorca, recorded 29.86C at the surface, however, this mark was surpassed both on Sunday 4 and Monday 5 August. The tide gauge installed by SOCIB (Balearic Islands Coastal Observing and Forecasting System) in Pollensa, recorded up to 30.5C.
Temperatures are forecast to remain very high in the Mediterranean and increase is expected along the coasts of Valencia, southern Catalonia and the Balearics, according to eltiempo.es. At the end of the July last year, the Mediterranean reached its highest temperature on record during an exceptional heat wave. “We attained a new record... in the daily median sea surface temperature of the Mediterranean: 28.71C,” Spain’s Institute of Marine Sciences said, analysing data from the satellites used by the European Earth observation program Copernicus.
“The last record was in August 23, 2003 with a median value of 28.25C,” it added at the time.
Such temperatures threaten marine life. During earlier heatwaves between 2015 and 2019 about 50 species including corals and molluscs were decimated. The Mediterranean region has long been classified as a hotspot of climate change.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a United Nations body, had warned that there was a drastic change in the marine ecosystems in the Mediterranean since the 1980s with a decline in biodiversity and the arrival of several invasive species. IPCC experts have warned that more than 20 percent of fish and invertebrates caught in the Mediterranean could disappear by 2060 if global warming exceeded the 1.5C target.
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