Sea Surface Temperature Variability and Marine Heatwaves in the Black Sea

Abstract

Marine heatwaves (MHWs) have recently been at the forefront of climate research due to their devastating impacts on the marine environment. In this study, we have evaluated the spatiotemporal variability and trends of sea surface temperature (SST) and MHWs in the Black Sea. Furthermore, we investigated the relationship between the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and MHW frequency. This is the first attempt to investigate MHWs and their characteristics in the Black Sea using high-resolution remote-sensing daily satellite SST data (0.05° × 0.05°) from 1982 to 2020. The results showed that the spatial average of the SST warming rate over the entire basin was about 0.65 ± 0.07 °C/decade. Empirical orthogonal function (EOF) analysis revealed that SST in the Black Sea exhibited inter-annual spatiotemporal coherent variability. The maximum spatial SST variability was discovered in the central Black Sea, whereas the lowest variability was in the Batumi and Caucasus anti-cyclonic eddies in the eastern Black Sea. The highest SST temporal variability was found in 1994. More than two-thirds of all MHW events were recorded in the last decade (2010–2020). The highest annual MHW durations were reported in 1994 and 2020. The highest MHW frequency was detected in 2018 (7 waves). Over the whole study period (1982–2020), a statistically significant increase in annual MHW frequency and duration was detected, with trends of 1.4 ± 0.3 waves/decade and 2.8 ± 1.3 days/decade, respectively. A high number of MHW events coincided with El Niño (e.g., 1996, 1999, 2007, 2010, 2018, and 2020). A strong correlation (R = 0.90) was observed between the annual mean SST and the annual MHW frequency, indicating that more MHWs can be expected in the Black Sea, with serious consequences for the marine ecosystem.

Thermal Structure of Water Exchange at the Entrance of a Tide-Dominated Strait

“…A satellite-observed SST is a powerful material in studying the ocean environment, which has been widely used in exploring marine heat waves [26][27][28][29], marine ecosystem [30,31], ocean front [32,33], mesoscale eddy [34,35], typhoon [36], and many other vital processes. In this work, we employed the Level-2 SST products observed by the Visible and Infrared Imager/Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) and the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on 31 July 2014, both data are available on http: //oceancolor.gsfc.nasa.gov/ (accessed on 16 January 2020).…”

Marine heatwaves characteristics in the Mediterranean Sea: Case study the 2019 heatwave events

“…Another important and well-documented cause of MHWs is heat advection by ocean currents, which can form areas of warm water (Oliver et al, 2017;Holbrook et al, 2019). Winds can either enhance or suppress warming during an MHW event, and large-scale atmospheric and oceanic teleconnection patterns can influence the likelihood of an MHW occurring in specific regions (Garrabou et al, 2009;Holbrook et al, 2019;Mohamed et al, 2021;Mohamed et al, 2022a).…”

Potential Effects of Climate Change on Black Sea Water Temperatures

“…Although there are cooling and warming events, Black Sea SST increased in the last century (Oguz et al,2006). Furthermore, more than half of the Marine Heatwaves occurred in the last century in the Black Sea (Mohamed et al,2022). Cold Intermediate Layer (CIL) has been changing (Miladinova et al, 2018) and there is a probability that CIL may disappear in the future (Stanev et al, 2019).…”