Europe's news in English

COPY LINK

CLIMATE CRISIS

28.7C: Mediterranean Sea breaks daily temperature record

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

Published: 25 July 2023 22:58 CEST

28.7C: Mediterranean Sea breaks daily temperature record

Temperatures in the Mediterranean sea hit record levels this week. Illustration photo Pascal POCHARD-CASABIANCA / AFP

“We attained a new record… in the daily median sea surface temperature of the Mediterranean: 28.71C,” Spain’s Institute of Marine Sciences said, analysing data from the satellites used by the European Earth observation programme Copernicus.

“The last record was in August 23, 2003 with a median value of 28.25C,” 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 1.5C, 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, hit by record temperatures in July, 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 exceeded the 1.5C target.

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.

Become a Member to leave a comment.

'Stress test': Olive oil producers adapt to climate change

“Climate change is already a reality and we need to adapt to it,” according to the executive director of the International Olive Council (IOC) Jaime Lillo.

He spoke at the opening of the three-day olive oil congress in Madrid which brings together 300 participants from around the globe.

The gathering came as the world’s top olive oil producers, including Spain, Italy and Greece, have recorded an unprecedented drop in production over the past two years due to extreme drought and repeated heatwaves.

Global production of olive oil fell from 3.42 million tonnes in the 2021-2022 season to 2.57 million tonnes in 2022-2023, IOC figures show.

And according to data supplied by the organisation’s 37 member states, it is set to fall again in 2023-2024 to 2.41 million tonnes.

This has caused prices to soar by between 50 percent and 70 percent over the past year, depending on the variety concerned.

Prices in Spain, which supplies around half of the world’s olive oil, have tripled since 2021, to the dismay of consumers.

READ ALSO: Spain to eliminate tax on olive oil to ease price jump

‘Complex scenarios’

Olive oil has been an essential part of the Mediterranean diet for thousands of years. Spaniards for instance use it to cook and to season fish, salads, vegetables and other dishes.

“The rise in prices has been a particularly demanding stress test for our sector. We have never experienced anything like this before,” said Pedro Barato, the head of the Spanish Olive Oil Interprofessional Organisation.

“We have to prepare ourselves for increasingly complex scenarios that will allow us to face up to the climate crisis,” he added, likening the “turbulence” faced by olive producers to that experienced by the banking sector during the 2008 financial crisis.

The outlook is not encouraging.

Over 90 percent of the world’s olive oil production comes from the Mediterranean basin.

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has said this region is warming 20-percent faster than the global average.

This situation could affect world production in the long term.

“We are facing a delicate situation” which implies “changing the way we treat trees and soil”, said Georgios Koubouris, a researcher at the Greek Olive Institute.

“The olive tree is one of the plants best adapted to a dry climate. But in an extreme drought, it activates mechanisms to protect itself and no longer produce anything. To grow olives, you need a minimum amount of water,” said Lillo.

‘Find solutions’

Among the possible solutions raised at the Madrid congress is genetic research.

In recent years hundreds of varieties of olive trees have been tested to identify the species best adapted to higher temperatures.

The goal is to find “varieties that need fewer hours of cold in winter and that are more resistant to stress caused by lack of water at certain key times” of the year, such as spring, said Juan Antonio Polo, head of technology at the IOC.

The sector is also looking to improve water use by storing rainwater, recycling wastewater and employing technology to use less water to irrigate trees.

This means abandoning “surface irrigation” and instead using “drip systems” which bring water “directly to the roots of the trees” to avoid water loss, said Kostas Chartzoulakis of the Greek Olive Institute.

Farmers are abandoning production in certain areas that could become unsuitable for olive trees because they are too dry and moving them to other regions.

There has been a rise in new olive tree plantations, although on a small scale, in regions previously not used to grow the crop, said Lillo, adding that he was “optimistic” about the future.

“With international cooperation, we will gradually find solutions,” he said.

Url copied to clipboard!