As we mentioned in last month’s E-Newsletter, Dave Tomasko, the Executive Director of the Sarasota Bay Estuary Program, has expressed concerns about the impact on red tide blooms with our warming coastal waters due to climate change.
Dave reports that records measuring air temperature go back over 120 years and they show that our weather along the Suncoast over the past 20 to 40 years is warmer across most months of the year when compared to the average conditions that existed during the 20th Century. With the recent cold snap, many of you probably feel that our weather is really cold, but by comparison it is not. Sarasota used to average two to three days a year with freezing temperatures. That frequency has decreased substantially over the past twenty years.
Warmer air temperatures also lead to warmer water temperatures. Back in the mid to late 1980s, we used to have about 90 days or three months when the water temperature was 68 degrees Fahrenheit or lower. Today, we only have about 45 days or half that time at those low temperatures. This is a significant environmental change as red tide grows much slower at these colder water temperatures. With the current warmer water trend, this means we will now experience optimum growing conditions for red tide for a month and half longer than in the recent past.
For those of us who live along the Suncoast it makes our efforts to lower our nutrient footprint in our warming coastal waters even more important.