Presenter: Giulia Bonino (Foundation Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change)

Description:
Marine Heat Waves (MHWs) induce significant impacts on marine ecosystems. There is a growing need for knowledge about extreme climate events to better inform decision-makers on future climate-related risks. The definition, physical drivers and ecological impacts of the extreme temperature anomalies are usually still examined individually, and the prediction of these extreme events is very challenging. In this context, the FEVERSEA project under the ESA Climate Change Initiative (CCI) program aims to provide a global assessment of MHWs in a consistent and comprehensive framework. We first detected MHWs from 1983  to 2016 in the ESA CCI Sea Surface Temperature product (4km of horizontal resolution). The detection analysis highlighted the importance of defining MHWs and their relevant metrics. Then, taking advantage of advanced statistical methods, in the Mediterranean basin we identified macro events and we clustered them based on shared metrics and characteristics. The analysis of the identified clusters aims to provide insight on possible common physical and climate drivers across macro events. The detection of the local and large-scale climate precursors of MHWs are the starting point to build up a prediction framework, which is the final objective of the FEVERSEA project.