The Mediterranean is boiling… The waters of the Mediterranean recorded their hottest temperature on record on Monday, according to Spain’s largest marine research center, amid an extreme heat wave that is hitting much of southern Europe and northern Africa.

“A new record for the period 1982-2023 was broken for mean daily sea surface temperature, with 28.71 degrees Celsius”, reported researchers from the Institute of Marine Sciences (ICM) in Barcelona, ​​after analyzing satellite data received from the European Copernicus Observatory.

The previous record was 28.25 points and was recorded on August 23, 2003.

These data will have to be confirmed by Copernicus but “we are convinced that (…) the median temperature, up to the first tenth, is generally correct”, said researchers Justino Martinez and Emilio García. These scientists prefer to take into account the median temperature instead of the mean (28.40°C on Monday) because its value is not affected by extreme readings in individual areas of the Mediterranean. Locally, the temperature exceeded 30 degrees (4 degrees above normal for the season) in the waters between Sicily and Naples.

Such high temperatures threaten marine ecosystems. In the heatwaves of the period 2015-19 in the Mediterranean increased the mortality of at least 50 species (corals, sea urchins, posidonia, etc.) at a depth of up to 45 meters, according to a study published in July 2022 in the scientific journal Global Change Biology.