Assessing marine heat waves in the Mediterranean Sea: a comparison of fixed and moving baseline methods

The study of marine heat waves as extreme temperature events has a wide range applications, from gauge for ecological and socioeconomic impact to climate change indicator. Various definitions sea exist account its broad applicability, with statistical based on percentile thresholds being widespread in use. Using satellite model data the Mediterranean Sea, we analyze implications choosing baseline climatological periods threshold delineation, which are either fixed past or shifted time. We show that context warming using leads saturation wave days compromises significance this indicator, 90% models analyzed predicting an average above 189 per year by 2050 even lowest emission scenario. argue only moving baseline, can reach definition yield consistently rare events.