For many hours on Monday, the shallow waters of South Florida reached 100 degrees Fahrenheit (37.8 degrees Celsius), potentially setting a new world record for temperatures more often associated with hot tubs.
The measurements were taken at a depth of five feet (1.5 meters) from a single buoy in Manatee Bay, roughly 38 miles (60 kilometers) southwest of Miami.
The temperature peaked at 101.1 degrees Fahrenheit at 6:00 p.m., although it lingered over 100 degrees Fahrenheit for approximately four hours, according to official data.
While there is no official world record for sea surface temperature, 2020 scientific research discovered that the previous high may have been 99.7F recorded in Kuwait Bay.
“However, because the new measurement was obtained near land, contamination of the measurement by land effects and organic matter in the water may…invalidate the record”, warned Jeff Masters, meteorologist, and former government scientist.
Some people may like the sauna-like temperatures, but prolonged excessive heat is disastrous to coral reef ecosystems and the organisms that rely on them.
It comes only days after the organization Coral Reef Foundation (CRF) announced that one of the reefs it was working to rehabilitate in South Florida had been destroyed.
“CRF teams went to Sombrero Reef, where we’ve been working on restoration for over a decade. What we discovered was unimaginable — 100% coral mortality”, said Phanor Montoya-Maya of the organization in a statement.
According to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, coral reefs contain around 25% of all marine species, rivaling the biodiversity of tropical rainforests.
“The Mediterranean Sea hit its highest temperature on record Monday during an unprecedented heatwave”, said Spanish researchers on Tuesday.
“We set a new record in the Mediterranean’s daily median sea surface temperature: 28.71C (83.68F)”, claimed Spain’s Institute of Marine Sciences.
The previous high was set on August 23, 2003, with a median temperature of 82.86F.
According to NASA meteorologist Gavin Schmidt, July 2023 is on course to be the hottest absolute month on record and the most desirable in perhaps thousands of years.
“We are seeing unprecedented changes all over the world”, he stated last week, noting that records are being broken on land and at the water, with the effects primarily attributed to human-caused climate change.
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