The intensity of extreme atmospheric phenomenon of the danas (isolated depression at high levels) have multiplied due to an increasingly warm Mediterranean Sea, this fall between 2 and 2.5 degrees higher than the average of recent decades.
Based on historical data, the The Mediterranean temperature should be around 20 degrees or even a little less in the southeastern latitudes of the peninsula, but these autumn weeks it is between 2 and 2.5 degrees higher.
This was warned by the director of the Institute of Water and Environmental Engineering (IIAMA) of the Polytechnic University of Valencia (UPV), Professor Manuel Pulido, to the EFE. expert in water use and climate change management.
A summer with high temperatures
These abnormal values They arrive shortly after a summer with a historic temperature record, with a maximum of 28.3 degrees off the Valencian coast and a month of October with more than 24°C.
This higher ocean temperature causes the water to expand and expand, occupying a larger volumewhich results in a sea level rise. Added to this is the increase in thermometer values in the atmosphere, which accelerates the melting of the polar caps and, in turn, raises the sea.
Acidification of the sea
Pulido cautioned that another factor to consider is that to higher sea temperatures and greater carbon absorption (the oceans are the great sink of the excess carbon that we emit), the seas are becoming more acidic with a negative impact on marine ecosystems and life below the aquatic surface, where a significant percentage of the planet’s habitats are found.
This anomaly of a warmer sea is part of global warming and, therefore, is included among the many and varied consequences linked to climate change, said the expert, who emphasized that Seas and oceans are fundamental in the balance of climate systems.
Thermal sponge and CO₂ sink
This is because they act as a regulator, a sort of “sponge» which moderates the increase in temperature due to global warming, in addition to having an essential role as a sink in the absorption of carbon dioxide (CO₂) to, precisely, mitigate climate change.
“A significant percentage of the excess heat produced by human activity,” Pulido argued, “is absorbed by the oceans in their function as a CO₂ sink» and this paper «is put in danger» due to changes in the ocean carbon cycle. Additionally, warmer seas reduce marine habitats.
Abnormal values
These abnormal values They are the fertile ground for very intense rains when an atmospheric phenomenon of dana occurs, when a more humid atmosphere is generated and more conducive to torrential precipitation.
The warm sea becomes a source of intense energy because it promotes accelerated evaporation and when wind currents carry this wet bag towards a favorable orography and it cools precipitously.
This causes their origin extreme precipitation in the Mediterranean they were previously called cold drops and now the most used term is danas, like those that occurred in Valencia and Malaga, with great intensity in a short period of time.
For Pulido, everything indicates that climate change makes the damage even more devastating in the future because “it is clear that the intensity of the phenomenon is increased by the conditions of warming Mediterranean temperatures”.
