The United States is experiencing a historic heat wave. Off the coast of Florida, the sea water is breaking all heat records, with major consequences not only for beachgoers, but also for the already endangered coral. “We’re entering a scary, unknown phase.”
Julia Padilla floats over the seabed in a veil of bubbles. Look down. The coral reef below her, once a colorful underwater forest, has petrified into a desolate wasteland. Padilla is looking for tufts that still stick out here and there. She takes notes with a clipboard and a special graphite pencil: ‘healthy’, ‘dead’, ‘white spots’.
After an hour of surveillance, she disappears to the surface. Padilla climbs onto the boat, takes off her goggles and sits forward. “So hot,” she sighs. “Unbelievable.” Her colleague: “You just sweat underwater.”
Padilla (22), zoologist in training, works for the Coral Restoration Foundation. This NGO protects the ailing coral reef off the coast of the US state of Florida. They replant coral, by hand, in a reef that has been decimated for 98 percent in recent decades. Now the question is whether the new growth will survive this summer.
The sea water off the coast of Florida is breaking all heat records. Just outside the capital Miami, an unprecedented water temperature of 36 degrees Celsius was measured last week: too hot for swimmers to cool down, downright life-threatening for coral. Padilla: “We are entering a scary, unknown phase here.”
The United States is experiencing a historic heat wave. Last weekend, nearly one in three Americans were on an “extreme heat” warning. Records are being broken left and right.
In Phoenix, Arizona, 46 degrees Celsius has been tapped for sixteen days in a row. Southern California sees new wildfires breaking out almost daily. In Las Vegas, Nevada, the emergency room is working overtime because of people with overheating. According to meteorologists, the Death Valley desert valley could break the record this week of 56.7 degrees Celsius – the highest temperature ever recorded on earth since 1913.
Floods
Northern states experience other forms of extreme weather. Flooding in New York, New Hampshire and Vermont, caused by unusually heavy rainfall, killed at least two people last week. More than 200 people had to be rescued by emergency services.
In the states of Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia, citizens have been urged to stay indoors due to dangerous thunderstorms. Colorado, Kansas and even northern Chicago issued tornado warnings.
The so-called ‘Sunshine State’ Florida, no stranger to warm weather, is now experiencing its hottest year in history. The daily temperature here is up to 5 degrees higher than average. In the capital Miami, eight heat records have been broken since June, on land, at sea, and with no end in sight.
‘Stay at home, people’
Not every sun worshiper is deterred. Lifeguard Pedro, 39, surveys the coastline of Miami’s popular South Pointe Beach from a wooden house on stilts painted like a lighthouse. He has his long hair tied up in a bun and his eyes narrowed. It’s 36 degrees, the humidity is almost 100 percent – and still dozens of bronzed beachgoers are stretched out in the full sun. “I don’t understand how anyone likes this,” says Pedro. “Stay at home, folks.”
As a teenager, Pedro, like many here, left communist Cuba for fashionable Miami. He was always the fastest swimmer he knew; a job as a lifeguard seemed logical. That was twenty years ago now. In all that time he has not experienced such heat. “This changes my work.”
These days, Pedro not only has to keep a close eye on the azure blue water, but especially the red-hot sand. “I haven’t had to pull anyone out of the sea all month. Overheating is another story.”
He has already treated dozens of them: watering, pushing ice packs under the armpits. In serious cases, he drives his quad to the refrigerated truck that is roaring permanently in the parking lot these days. “People are used to taking a cooling dip in the water when they get too hot. That makes little sense now. You don’t cool down in a jacuzzi.”
Climate change
About 70 percent of all Americans are expected to experience temperatures above 33 degrees Celsius next week. The cause of this extreme weather in the US is a so-called ‘heat dome’, a meteorological phenomenon in which high air pressure hangs over an area like a lid and thus traps the heat. Climate change means that these types of domes occur more often and increase in duration and intensity. Several states are taking emergency measures. Libraries across the country are being set up to accommodate people who don’t have air conditioning at home.
In Florida, the heated sea can have major long-term consequences. Meteorologists warn of an increasing chance of tropical storms or hurricanes later in the season. Scientists at Colorado State University, who expected a relatively quiet season earlier this year, have revised their forecast. This threatens to be a stormy late summer.
In the shadow of Pedro’s red and white lifeguard tower, the Quiroa family takes a breather. Father Jonathan (41), son Anderson (28) and mother-in-law Aracelli (60) are on holiday from tropical Guatemala. This is hotter than even they are used to, even now in the early morning. “We can’t stay on the beach for very long,” says Aracelli.
Sick coral
A hundred kilometers away, 10 meters below the surface, divers from the Coral Restoration Foundation are doing everything they can to save their coral. Here on the seabed they have built a coral nursery: a forest of tubes, along which young coral grows until it is large enough to be planted in the reef further on.
The divers scrape deposits from the scaffolding with toilet brushes. They carefully avoid the colored bits of coral floating around on fishing line. In this way, the NGO has already returned more than 200,000 pieces of coral to nature. But every dive these days produces worried faces. As long as the heat continues, the foundation has stopped planting. They watch the reef die before their very eyes.
Diver Jen Pollom points out stark white spots appearing on the orange leaves of the endangered elkhorn coral. “Coral literally feels sick in this heat,” she says back on board. “It starts to repel algae, like a person throwing up in a fever.” The stark white skeleton remains behind. Without these algae, the coral can survive for another month before it dies irrevocably.
“I’m starting to lose hope,” says Pollom. She wipes streaks of mascara from her face, smeared by the salt water. “Summer has just started. We still have months of heat ahead of us.”
