Climate change deniers have just found an unexpected ‘ally’ in the Vigo estuary. Researchers from the Spanish Institute of Oceanography have spent the last 34 years analyzing salinity and temperature from this enclave in the province of Pontevedra, and from its adjacent continental shelf, and it turns out that nothing has happened.
“Despite the context of global warming, no statistically significant trend was observed. The study area has been responding to climate change differently to other nearby oceanic areas,” concludes the study
Between 1987 and 2020 The researchers have not stopped collecting and comparing samples in waters that have been “capable of cushioning the temperature escalation that has been observed and significantly during that period both in oceanic waters and in the Cantabrian Sea,” says Pablo Otero, researcher at the IEO Oceanographic Center of Vigo and main author of the study.
The conclusion coincides with the affirmations of the researcher Ricardo Torres, of the Plymouth Marine Laboratorywho states that the water circulation system within the Ría de Vigo makes it a “unique enclave” in Europe, which “guarantees the health of the ecosystem because the estuary empties every so often”.
The researchers, however, are still not satisfied, with which the resistance to climate change in the Vigo estuary could collapse at any time. “This summer is being very atypical, with very high temperatures in the Rías Baixas. That there has been no significant trend in the recent past does not mean that we are not entering a period of change. Hence the importance of continuing to measure,” says Otero.
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