Mediterranean boiled under hottest-ever recorded temperature Monday, data shows

Institute of Marine Sciences says sea’s temperature rose to 28.71°C, topping 28.25°C recorded in August 2003, as region sweats through intense heatwave

The Mediterranean Sea reached its highest temperature on record Monday during an exceptional heatwave, Spanish researchers told AFP on Tuesday.

“We attained a new record… in the daily median sea surface temperature of the Mediterranean: 28.71°C (83.67°F),” Spain’s Institute of Marine Sciences said, analyzing 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 28.25°C (82.85°F),” it added.

These findings are yet to be confirmed by Copernicus.

Copernicus recently said that at the beginning of June, global temperatures exceeded pre-industrial levels by more than 1.5°C (34.7°F), which is the most ambitious cap for global warming in the 2015 Paris Agreement.

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 exceeds the 1.5°C target.