US East Coast To Suffer Deadly Marine Heat Waves by 2100 [Video]

The east coast of the United States could face dangerous marine heat waves—prolonged periods of unusually warm seawater temperatures—for more than 100 days a year by 2100, new research has shown.

With estuaries serving as key habitats for nearly three-quarters of all fish species and supporting more than 54 million jobs, this could have an “unprecedented” impact on our ecosystem, warned the study published in Scientific Reports.

The team examined conditions across 20 estuaries in the U.S. National Estuarine Research Reserve System over the past two decades.

The last 20 years have seen an increase in MHW (marine heat wave) frequency as well as MHW days per year and yearly cumulative intensity.

However, these MHW trends were found to be mostly concentrated on the U.S. east coast region, “which also experiences higher-intensity events and is therefore already more vulnerable to thermal stress in response to MHW events,” the team wrote.

If the observed …