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The Mediterranean, the area most affected by climate change

The Mediterranean, the area most affected by climate change
Europe is the fastest warming continent: in the last five years it has recorded an average temperature increase of 2.3°C compared to the pre-industrial era, well above the global average of 1.3° (Copernicus data).

After the Arctic, the Mediterranean area is the most affected by climate change. And the Mediterranean Sea is warming 20% ​​faster than everyone else.

"We have entered a phase of exponential acceleration of ecosystem change, to the point where we no longer know what will happen," comments Grammenos Mastrojeni, the Union's Deputy Secretary General for the Mediterranean. "We have changed the energy balance of the Earth system with this greenhouse gas blanket that allows solar radiation to enter, but does not release it into space when the planet will return it, storing a large amount of energy each day: in a global level is higher than the detonation of 400,000 Hiroshima bombs per day."

"Since the early 1980s, the Mediterranean Sea has warmed by about 0.4°C per decade, which is faster than the global ocean average. This is leading to more frequent and severe marine heat waves, especially in the last 20 years," explains Giulia Bonino, researcher at the Euro-Mediterranean Center for Climate Change.