Sea surface temperature climatology was derived from the Med MFC physical reanalysis product available from Copernicus Marine Service. This product is generated by a numerical system composed of an hydrodynamic model, supplied by the Nucleous for European Modelling of the Ocean (NEMO) and a variational data assimilation scheme (OceanVAR) for temperature and salinity vertical profiles and satellite Sea Level Anomaly along track data. The data set used spans from 1987 to 2019, and has a temporal resolution of one day.
The criteria used to define a marine heatwave are those used by Hobday et al (2016), namely that they are defined relative to a baseline climatology, preferably spanning at least 30 years and also relative to a high percentile threshold such as 90%. Hobday et al. (2016) also recommends a five-day window to get the count of MHW events. Further, they suggest any gap which is equal or less than 2 days will mean the 5-day event continues.
Access the resulting marine heat wave maps for the whole Mediterranean Sea.
