The Mediterranean Just Did Something It's Never Done Before

[00:00:00]It has just done something it has never done in the instrumental [music] record.

[00:00:05]In each of the past 3 years, 2023, 2024, and 2025, the entire Mediterranean Sea experienced at least strong marine heat wave conditions.

[00:00:18]In at least [music] half the basin, conditions reached severe or extreme classification every year.

[00:00:25]Three consecutive years, the whole basin.

[00:00:28]The heat is not visiting.

[00:00:31]It is staying.

[00:00:33]The Mediterranean is currently warming approximately 20% faster than the global average.

[00:00:39]The Mediterranean is warming faster than that.

[00:00:43]The Atlantic inflow is not moderating the system. It is feeding it.

[00:00:48]Because what happened beneath the surface of the Mediterranean that same summer received almost no coverage.

[00:00:55]And it is the part of the 2003 event that is directly relevant to what the Copernicus data is now showing.

[00:01:02]The 2003 marine heat wave produced unprecedented mass mortality events across the Mediterranean basin, affecting [music] more than 40 species from various taxa.

[00:01:14]Sponges, corals, gorgonian fans, [music] mollusks, bryozoans, across thousands of kilometers of coastline.

[00:01:23]Approximately 80% of gorgonian fan colonies and significant areas of seagrass Posidonia oceanica were affected. Posidonia is not a decorative plant.

[00:01:35]Posidonia oceanica forms extensive meadows covering around 19,000 square kilometers along Europe's coasts.

[00:01:44]A single hectare absorbs carbon at a rate 15 times higher per year than a comparable area of Amazon rainforest.

[00:01:52]These meadows are the nursery habitat for a significant fraction of Mediterranean fisheries.

[00:01:59]Gorgonian colonies affected by the 2003 event showed no meaningful recovery in some locations more than a decade later.

[00:02:08]The damage was not a setback.

[00:02:11]It was a permanent subtraction from the baseline.

[00:02:15]The system is not just warming.

[00:02:17]It is pre-loading.

[00:02:19]And the pre-load for summer 2026 is the highest ever recorded going into a Mediterranean summer season.