The episodes known as marine heat waves, prolonged periods of high temperatures on the surface of the sea, have almost tripled since 1940, according to a study by the Mediterranean Institute of Advanced Studies, IMEDA (CSIC-UIB) of Spain and National Center for Atmospheric Science at Reading University (United Kingdom).
The extreme heat days in the sea have multiplied by three since 1940 due to the global warming caused by human activities, without which almost half of these extreme episodes would not have occurred, according to the study that has recently published in the scientific journal ‘PNAS’, the UIB reported in a statement.
Dr. Marta Marcos, professor of the UIB Department of Physics and the main author of the study, explains that marine heat waves “have important consequences for marine life, and affect coral reefs and marine meadows.”
To quantify the contribution of climate change caused by human activity to the observed marine heat waves, researchers have developed a backward model of sea surface temperatures since 1940 to global scale.
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This model eliminates global warming trends, shows a stable climate, and allows you to compare this data with the trends observed over more than eight decades to quantify that contribution of climate change to marine heat waves.
According to the data of this model, 47% of the marine heat waves that have occurred between 2000 and 2020 would not have been qualified as extreme events if it were not for the effect of global warming.
More frequent and intense
In addition, global warming also related to an increase of almost three times since 1940 in the number of days a year in which the oceans experience extreme heat on the surface.
The results also show that global warming is on average responsible for an increase of 1 grade in the intensity of marine heat waves throughout these decades.
Dr. Marcos, sets as an example the summer episode of 2023 in the waters of the British and Mediterranean islands, where “the data shows exceptionally hot summers that were lived between 2021 and 2023, with increases greater than 2 Celsius each year, attributable to global warming.”
“This same responsibility for global warming in the generation of marine heat waves we have also been able to observe it in episodes that occurred at other times and in other parts of the world, such as the heat wave of the Northeast of the Pacific between 2014 and 2015, or the heat wave that affected the Sea of Tasmania between 2015 and 2016,” Marcos added.
The results also show an amplified intensification guideline of the marine heat waves from the year 2000, which highlights the detrimental paper of global warming in the extreme temperature phenomena of the sea surface.
The study has revealed the heterogeneity in the geographical distribution of marine heat waves, because the impact of global heating is variable according to the region, with equatorial and tropical areas of the Eastern Pacific and the eastern Atlantic where marine heat waves occur more frequently but not more intense, while in northern areas of the Atlantic and the Pacific and the Baltic They are not more persistent, but more intense.
Researchers warn that these changes have deep impacts on the adaptation of ecosystems to new climatic conditions, which respond to a combination of extreme heat and duration of the event.
The developed model can provide information on the role of global warming in these changes at local and regional scale, and contribute to anticipate hazards and threats and help design adaptation and mitigation strategies to the new climate and environmental context
With EFE information.
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