Mediterranean Yacht Tragedy Has Climate Change Roots

The impacts of climate change are somewhat famously skewed toward the less fortunate in the world. The heat waves, the flooding, the human displacement and migration, the potential food shortages and famine — virtually all of it strikes the developing world harder than rich countries, and poorer people inside developed countries more than their wealthier neighbors. But that doesn’t make the rich immune.

Whether its glacial collapse in the Italian Alps, or wildfire smoke choking New York and Washington, or unseen storms destroying a beach house, climate change comes for all of us. And this week, another tragic example: a 184-foot luxury yacht sank early on Monday off the coast of Sicily, apparently the victim of a tornadic waterspout made far more likely by the abnormally warm waters of the Mediterranean.

The accident killed at least one person, though six more are missing, including British tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch and his daughter; the yacht, named Bayesian, was carrying 22 people in total. (In an odd aside, Lynch’s co-defendant in a decade-old fraud case died in a car accident just days before.)

The Mediterranean has been boiling this summer, as consecutive heat waves rolled across Europe and North Africa. In fact, Spanish researchers confirmed only days ago that the Sea had set its all-time record high average temperature on August 17, breaking a record set — you’re not going to believe this — just last year. Just like in the Atlantic basin, where record temperatures juice up hurricanes and allow for unprecedented rapid intensification, the heat in the Mediterranean could prime the atmosphere to unleash the unexpected hell that took out the Bayesian.

“For example, 30 years ago an event of this kind might have brought winds of 100kmh,” said Luca Mercalli, the president of the Italian Meteorological Society, according to The Guardian. “Today it’s 150kmh because sea temperatures of three degrees higher means an enormous quantity of energy for storms, and when cold air arrives it’s explosive.”

A 184-foot yacht might seem like a refuge from a lot of the world’s ills. Not all of them.