Ocean Temperatures Crack 100°F Off the Coast of Florida
The temperature of ocean water (at a depth of five feet) off the coast of Florida reached above 100°F for multiple hours.
A reading that close to land can be contaminated by organic matter or land effects—potentially voiding any records, but not diminishing the extreme warmth.
Marine biologists are concerned that the elevated temperatures could damage or destroy the local coral reef ecosystem.
Forget heated swimming pools, even hot tubs have nothing on the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Southern Florida. The waters sustained multiple hours of plus-100°F temperatures (topping out at 101.1°F), plenty warm enough to have experts start talking about a world record for ocean temperature.
The reading in question comes from a buoy in Manatee Bay dipping five feet into the Atlantic Ocean roughly 38 miles south of Miami. That peak temperature could become a world record, but only if it stands as an official recording. Either way, the extreme weather in the southern United States is impacting far more than just those on land.
Jeff Masters, a former hurricane scientist for NOAA, co-founder of Weather Underground, and now writing about extreme weather and climate change for Yale Climate Connections, took to Twitter to explain just why this 101.1°F reading could be a world record (and why it might not get validated).
First off, this is a sea surface temperature—SST for those in the know. The day the SST was recorded, it actually reached higher than the air temperature—not uncommon for shallow water close to land.
Official SST world records aren’t kept, making this record determination all the more difficult. But Masters claimed that a Kuwait Bay SST of 99.7°F is believed to be the current record holder, as published in a 2020 paper. The potential combination of contaminants by land effects or organic matter in the water could keep the Manatee Bay measurement from reaching pinnacle status.
“The shallow waters of the Everglades can have a lot of organic matter,” Masters writes. “Thus, unless there is photographic proof that debris was not present in the water, it will be difficult to verify the 101.1°F record as valid.”
He added that a paper from 14 years ago found that SST measurements in the Florida Keys tended to be too warm by up to 1.8°F, thanks to land interference.
“I have no doubt a dip in Manatee Bay today would have been a hot tub-like experience with SSTs near 100°F,” he says, “and that these waters were some of the hottest ever recorded on Earth. A detailed investigation would be needed to determine if this was a world record SST.”
The SST has steadily increased during the Florida heat wave. SST temperatures hovered in the 90s for multiple days, priming the pump for the push over 100°F. CBS News reports that the Miami region spent 21 straight days under either a weather alert or advisory.
Meteorologists measuring SSTs aren’t the only ones with a close eye on what the temperature is doing to the water. The Coral Restoration Foundation says that coral mortality has increased—especially in the Lower Keys—due to the extreme temperatures, with a total loss of coral at the Sombrero Reef restoration site.
“We have also lost almost all of the corals in the Looe Key Nursery in the Lower Keys,” says Phanor Montoya-Maya, restoration program manager at Coral Restoration Foundation, in a news release. “Yet, despite the devastation, we remain hopeful and determined. Sites in the Upper Keys, where the water is cooler, are not yet showing such dramatic declines, which gives us time to act.”
While they might be nice for a quick dip, most living things that call the sea home—coral included—aren’t fans of hot tubs.
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