Ninety years of coastal monitoring reveals baseline and extreme ocean temperatures are increasing off the Finnish coast

Long term coastal surface and sub-surface monitoring reveals that warm temperature extremes have intensified and cold extremes nearly vanished in the last decades, increasing baseline water temperature on the southwest coast of Finland. Global marine heatwave assessments often rely on satellite-derived sea surface temperature. However, these data have low accuracy in coastal areas, are unable to measure sub-surface temperatures and have only been available since the 1980s. Here, we analyse 90 years of in situ surface and bottom (30 m) water temperature data from a Finnish coastal monitoring site. Water temperatures were significantly higher between 1991-2020 than 1931-1960 and 1961-1990. We find strong differences between satellite-derived and in situ temperatures, with in situ temperatures being lower in autumn and winter and higher in spring. Measurements at the seafloor indicate marine heatwaves occurred during all seasons between 2016 and 2020, with intensities and durations exceeding previous records. Since the 1990s, we find an upward shift of the baseline temperature and increasingly frequent occurrence of temperatures previously considered as an extreme. Our findings highlight the importance of long-term in situ data and choice of climatological reference periods for assessing change.