A sudden marine heat wave off the coast of Florida has surprised scientists and sent water temperatures soaring to unprecedented highs, threatening one of the most severe coral bleaching events the state has ever seen.
Sea surface temperatures around Florida have reached the highest levels on record since satellites began collecting ocean data. And the warming is happening much earlier than normal – yet another example of ocean heat being amplified by the human-caused climate crisis and the extreme weather it brings.
“We didn’t expect this heating to happen so early in the year and to be so extreme,” Derek Manzello, a coordinator at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Coral Reef Watch, told CNN. “This appears to be unprecedented in our records.”
The exceptional temperatures – close to 97 degrees Fahrenheit in some areas – are more than just another alarming climate record; extreme ocean heat and its duration are critical in deciding the survival of coral reefs. Temperatures that are too hot for too long cause coral to bleach, turning a ghastly white as they expel their algal food source and slowly starve to death.
Coral that bleaches won’t always die, but the more intense the heat and the longer it lasts, the more inevitable death becomes, coral experts said.
All it takes is sea surface warming of 1 degree Celsius, or 2 to 3 degrees Fahrenheit, beyond the reef’s normal highest temperature to trigger the heat stress that leads to bleaching, according to Manzello. The sea surface temperatures around Florida are more than 2 degrees Celsius above that normal range and have been for one to two weeks, he said.
Buoys off the coast of Florida measured hot tub-like water temperatures near 97 degrees Fahrenheit on Monday in the shallow, heat-prone Florida Bay between the southern tip of Florida and the Keys. The more ecologically vital and expansive coral reefs are located east and south of the Florida Keys, but the buoy measurements indicate just how extreme the heat in Florida has been so unusually early in the summer.
Ocean temperatures around Florida usually get hotter as the summer progresses and don’t reach their peak until late August into September, Manzello said, meaning ocean temperatures could rise further.
Read more:
https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/12/us/florida-ocean-heat-coral-bleaching-climate/index.html
