Browse the map to select a Marine Protected Area (MPA), and the future climate change scenarios of Marine Heatwaves and Sea Surface Temperature will be computed and depicted in the scenario tabs.This information is intended to supplement a Climate Change Vulnerability Assessment tool, developed by the Future Oceans Lab at the University of Vigo under the MPA4Change Interreg-Med project.
Climate exposure in Marine Protected Areas
This tool provides different metrics related to sea surface temperature (SST) and marine heatwaves (MHW) in MPAs of the Mediterranean Sea and the east-central Atlantic. Projections are for the period 2006 to 2100 for two Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP): 4.5 and 8.5, and were obtained from Copernicus Climate Change Service, DOI: 10.24381/cds.dcc9295c. Marine protected area delimitations were obtained from the World Database of Protected Areas (WDPA). Marine heatwave metrics and Sea Surface Temperatre estimation follow Hobday et al. (2016, 2018), computed in Python with the marineHeatWaves module (E. C. J. Oliver, https://github.com/ecjoliver/marineHeatWaves). Hobday, Alistair J., et al. *Categorizing and naming marine heatwaves*. Oceanography 31.2 (2018): 162-173. UNEP-WCMC and IUCN (2025), Protected Planet: The World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA) [Online], April 2025, Cambridge, UK: UNEP-WCMC and IUCN. Copernicus Climate Change Service, Climate Data Store, (2020): Marine biogeochemistry data for the Northwest European Shelf and Mediterranean Sea from 2006 up to 2100 derived from climate projections. Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) Climate Data Store (CDS). DOI: 10.24381/cds.dcc9295c (Accessed on March 2025)
With a fixed baseline, long-term warming makes almost every day a heatwave by the end of the century. The shifting baseline first removes the 30-year moving mean of SST, so it counts only the extremes above the warming trend (Hobday et al. 2018). SST panels always show the actual temperature.
Reference values: 28 °C is often used as a heat-stress threshold for Posidonia oceanica, and around 30 °C is associated with mass mortality of gorgonians and Pinna nobilis. Adjust them for the species of interest.
Degree Heating Weeks (NOAA Coral Reef Watch method): heat accumulated over 12 weeks at 1 °C or more above the warmest month of the 2006–2022 climatology. The 4 and 8 °C-week thresholds were defined for corals; use them as a relative guide.
Annual indicators 4_5
Annual indicators 8_5
Periods Table 4_5
Periods Table 8_5
Annual Table 4_5
Annual Table 8_5
