Widespread warming of Earth's estuaries

<p><i>Water temperature responses to climate change may vary across Earth's estuaries. To understand how climate change influences estuarine surface water temperature, we need global, long-term records of estuarine temperature. Here, we generated spatially explicit data of surface water temperature over 1,060 estuaries globally using Landsat 5, 7 and 8 from 1985 to 2022 and compared water warming rates with local air temperature warming rates. 47% of Earth's estuaries are warming, with a global average warming rate of 0.070 ± 0.004 degree Celsius/year (median = 0.060 degree Celsius/year). Estuaries at higher latitudes showed rapid warming. A 1 </i>degree<i> Celsius increase in air temperature could lead to a 0.81 degree Celsius increase in estuarine surface water warming, or 1.3 degrees Celsius in estuaries above 60.5 degrees North.&nbsp;We inferred the potential influences over estuarine warming based on distinct global spatial patterns in water and air warming, or lack of warming, and </i>discussed<i> implications for estuarine carbon cycling.</i></p>