Scientists have warned that the seas around Ireland and much of Europe are warming beyond a stage that many marine species can tolerate.
The World Weather Attribution (WWA) network of scientists forecast severe disruption to ecosystems, with impacts ranging from fisheries loss to elevated bacterial levels posing a threat to public health.
As The Irish Times reports, the network includes Claire Bergin, researcher at Maynooth University’s Icarus Climate Research Centre.
“While warmer waters for swimming may sound appealing to beachgoers in cooler countries like Ireland, the impacts on marine life beneath the surface is more serious,” she told the newspaper.
Bergin said a marine heatwave in Ireland would have been expected once a century in the pre-industrial era before climate change, but it is now expected every three years.
“It will happen every year as climate change intensifies,” she said.
The scientists studied four marine areas over two weeks in July, including the Celtic region extending over Ireland’s Atlantic and southern waters and the Irish Sea.
Ireland’s waters fared better than the other three regions – the Bay of Biscay and Atlantic coasts of Spain and Portugal, the Western Mediterranean and the Eastern Mediterranean, they note.
Temperatures around Ireland were on average 1.3 degrees above normal for July.
However, marine ecologist Prof John Bruno explained that it takes only a one degree rise to harm some species or even cause mass deaths.
Read The Irish Times here
