Scottish aquaculture sites faced very different heatwave trajectories
WHAT THE EVIDENCE SAYS
Researchers sampled 1990–2025 daily satellite sea-surface temperatures at 361 farm locations represented by 218 grid cells, with in-situ checks at eight farms. Comparing 1990–2019 with 2020–2025, the two exposure groups showed estimated event-duration increases of 44.6% and 89.9%. Severe-or-extreme event probabilities increased far more steeply in one group, even as mean event intensity changed comparatively little.
WHY IT MATTERS / OUR READ
Regional warming maps can hide site-level risk profiles. Monitoring and adaptation decisions should distinguish heatwave frequency, persistence, cumulative heat and uncertainty at operating sites.
CAVEATS / UNCERTAINTY
Five-kilometer satellite data do not capture all farm-depth thermal exposures, and this is a hazard assessment, not measured mortality or economic loss at farms. The analysis is an accepted early-layout peer-reviewed article.
SOURCE
Frontiers in Marine Science — Toledo-Jaime et al. (2026)
View original evidence ↗
A satellite and farm-data analysis finds that increases in marine heatwave duration and severity were spatially uneven.
Read the Wild Lands assessment →