North-Heat

Long-term ocean and atmospheric warming driven by a changing climate are making common the occurrence of prolonged Marine Heat Waves (MHWs) while reducing the incidence of cold spells. These two extremes have now been well documented, and have shown to provoke severe impacts on marine ecosystems globally – and on near-shore, shallow environments specifically – with in turn huge ecological and socioeconomic consequences. There is however a lack of knowledge on the impacts of these extreme events at the regional level, among others because of the lack of adequate datasets at the required high spatial and temporal resolutions.

North-Heat (2022-2024) will adress these gaps by focusing on the following objectives:

1. Determine the Marine Heat Waves and Cold Spells in the southern North Sea.
2. Develop a methodology, based on DINEOF, to improve the spatial resolution of SST data using high-resolution SST data from Landsat/TIRS data.
3. Study the influence of specific MHWs on the different habitats of the southern North Sea, through the study of very high spatial resolution sea surface temperature and ocean color variables like chlorophyll.

A project funded by the STEREO-IV BELSPO call