Florida ocean temperature tops 37 deg C, setting potential record
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Sustained extreme heat is devastating for coral reef ecosystems and the species that depend on them.
PHOTO: AFP
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MIAMI - Shallow waters off south Florida topped 37.8 deg C for several hours on Monday, potentially setting a new world record with temperatures more commonly associated with hot tubs.
The readings were taken from a single buoy in Manatee Bay, about 61km south-west of Miami, at a depth of 1.5m.
A peak temperature of 38.4 deg C was recorded at 6pm, but it remained above 37.8 deg C for about four hours, official data showed.
Dr Jeff Masters, a meteorologist and former government scientist, tweeted that while there was no official world record for sea surface temperature, a 2020 scientific paper found that the previous high might have been 37.6 deg C recorded in Kuwait Bay.
But since the new measurement was taken near land, “contamination of the measurement by land effects and organic matter in the water might… invalidate the record”, he added.
“Unless there is photographic proof that debris was not present, it would be difficult to (verify) the 101 deg F (38.4 deg C) record as valid,” he said on social media.
The sauna-like conditions might be enjoyable for some humans, but sustained extreme heat is devastating for coral reef ecosystems and the species that depend on them.
It comes days after the non-profit Coral Reef Foundation (CRF) said that one reef in south Florida it had been working to restore had been devastated.
“CRF teams visited Sombrero Reef, a restoration site we’ve been working at for over a decade. What we found was unimaginable – 100 per cent coral mortality,” said the organisation’s Dr Phanor Montoya-Maya, in a statement.
About 25 per cent of all marine species are found in, on or around coral reefs, rivalling the biodiversity of tropical rainforests, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Across the globe, the Mediterranean Sea reached its highest temperature on record on Monday during an exceptional heatwave, researchers said on Tuesday.
“We attained a new record… in the daily median sea surface temperature of the Mediterranean: 28.71 deg C,” Spain’s Institute of Marine Sciences said. The previous record was on Aug 23, 2003, with a median value of 28.3 deg C.
July 2023 is on track to be the hottest absolute month on record, as well as the hottest in potentially thousands of years, said Nasa climatologist Gavin Schmidt.
“We are seeing unprecedented changes all over the world”, with records being broken on land and in the sea, and the effects mostly attributable to human-caused climate change, he added. AFP
