Invasion of tropical species in the Mediterranean?
It sounds like the storyboard for an action-packed science fiction blockbuster, but it's reality. Rising temperatures make it possible.
A research team with Austrian participation reports that increasing global warming is weakening the cool upwelling current along the coast of northwest Africa, which until now has formed a barrier that tropical species pass through with ease.
What does that mean?
The team led by Paolo Albano from the "Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn" in Naples describes in the scientific journal "PNAS", among other things, that almost half of the Mediterranean fauna is found nowhere else in the world. However, rising temperatures are causing them to falter and there is already talk of a "biological invasion" by species from the Indo-Pacific from the Suez Canal.
The Mediterranean could become tropical
With "moderate" global warming of 1.1 to 2.6 degrees compared to the year 2000 by the year 2100 (climate scenario RCP 4.5 of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change IPCC), it would be possible for tropical species to populate large parts of the Mediterranean from the Atlantic by 2050 without restriction
If climate change were to continue unabated, with 2.6 to 4.8 degrees of warming (climate scenario RCP 8.5), the Mediterranean could be considered a tropical sea in 2100.
