Record sea temperature for July set on the Costa del Sol: these are the reasons why
On Tuesday this week, 28C was recorded at the harbour buoy in Malaga Port, the highest value for the month since records have been kept in 1984
"It's like a hot stew." If you have been to any beach along the Costa del Sol these last few days, you will surely have heard some bather say these words, "está caldo de puchero", such a popular turn of phrase here in Malaga province. This unofficial test at the water's edge is not wrong, as this is backed up by official data. On Tuesday, the buoy at the Port of Malaga reached a new milestone temperature of 28C, a new record for the month of July since records began in 1984. The previous record high was in 2015 with 27.7C. The historical average for July is 20.3C in Malaga province's waters.
The explanation? Simple: "the long summer days and solar radiation, which causes the air temperatures to rise and the top few centimetres of the ocean's upper layer to warm," explained José Luis Escudero, a meteorology expert. However, two other factors must be present to square the circle: "no continuous episodes of terral (onshore) or levante (easterly) storms that churn up the water," said Escudero. Both of these have aligned this month. "These days we haven't had any strong, terral gusts, so cold waters haven't surfaced. We've also had big waves. Therefore, there has been what we colloquially call a 'dead calm' that has caused the water temperature to rise", said Escudero, author of the SUR weather blog 'Tormentas y Rayos' (storms and lightning) .
However, we are still some way from the all-time high sea temperature for Malaga reported by the Puertos del Estado register (Spain's weather buoy system), which has provided daily data since 1985 collected from the buoy floating on the outskirts of the port area of Malaga city. As Escudero recalls in his weather blog, we have to go back to 4pm on 7 August 2015. On that particular day, the people of Malaga would have taken a very warm dip of 29.1C. "On that day, we'd had several weeks of calm seas with no wind and high temperatures. When it doesn't get stirred up, the surface water gets very warm. So, as the summer progresses, the water gets increasingly warmer. This is provided there are no swells from onshore winds, which bring cooler waters to the surface, or storms, which also lower the temperature," said the weather expert.
To find the opposite extreme - valuable information for the curious - we have to go back to January 2020 when 11.7C was recorded, the coldest sea temperature on record. During the summer season, on 8 July 2014, a very low temperature of 15.4C was recorded. "In Malaga we're very close to the Atlantic, so cold currents enter from that direction. This means that in summer our waters are less warm than those of Murcia, Alicante or Barcelona, where they reach 30C."
This latest record in July is not the only one so far this year, as records were broken for the months of May and June. Last month the sea in Malaga recorded peak temperatures of around seven degrees above the average.
As for the forecast for the next few days, Escudero warns that the warm waters and hotter temps are likely to be short-lived. "On Saturday and Sunday, all the right ingredients are in place for a cooldown to around 18C. The formation of a Dana-type [Atlantic] storm could bring a westerly wind with strong gusts to the entire Malaga coastline starting Friday."
