Every year as summer approaches and beaches are closed along Egypt’s northern coast, the same question seems to reoccur. Are the threats related to global warming exaggerated, or are they already taking place?
Residents of Alexandria and some other coastal cities have reported a change in the coastline, claiming that the sea level is becoming higher and that beaches are eroding fast. But determining how far this is true should remain the work of scientists.
One new study has revealed “a dramatic surge in building collapses in the ancient Egyptian port city of Alexandria, directly linked to rising sea levels and seawater intrusion.”
“Once a rare occurrence, building collapses in Alexandria, one of the world’s oldest cities, often called the ‘bride of the Mediterranean’ for its beauty, have accelerated from approximately one per year to an alarming 40 per year over the past decade,” the researchers found.
“The true cost of this loss extends far beyond bricks and mortar,” said Essam Heggy, a scientist at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering in the US and the study’s corresponding author. “We are witnessing the gradual disappearance of historic coastal cities, with Alexandria sounding the alarm. What once seemed like distant climate risks are now a present reality.”
Egypt’s Mediterranean coast is now entering a new scientific phase with the launch of a cross-border Mediterranean initiative based on systematic measurement, continuous monitoring, and the early prediction of the effects of climate change on the rates of sea-level rise and changes in water temperatures.
This scientific shift follows the launch of the European Union’s Interreg NEXT MED programme, part of the Mediterranean Joint Initiative for Climate Adaptation and Risk Prevention (MedJICARP).
The programme aims to establish a multi-platform perimeter monitoring system based on positional sensors, high-frequency radars, and automated monitoring systems on ships and ferries with the aim of improving predictability by providing accurate data to monitor extreme weather events, such as Mediterranean hurricanes, sea-level rises, and extreme weather conditions.
It is not limited to the technical dimension but also seeks to enhance cross-border cooperation by enabling the Eastern Mediterranean countries to exchange data and experiences, ensuring the building of a long-term sustainable monitoring system for the Mediterranean Basin.
It involves seven Mediterranean countries, namely Egypt, Cyprus, Greece, Malta, Italy, Tunisia, and Lebanon. Nine Mediterranean scientific and research institutions will participate in the project, including the University of Cyprus Oceanographic Centre, the Cyprus Maritime Institute (CMMI), the Hellenic Centre for Marine Research (HCMR) in Greece, the University of Malta, the University of Palermo in Italy, the Italian Higher Institute for Environmental Protection and Research (ISPRA), the National Council for Scientific Research in Lebanon, the National Institute of Marine Sciences and Fisheries (NIOF) in Egypt, and the National Institute of Marine Science and Technology (INSTM) in Tunisia.
The Interreg NEXT MED programme was motivated by challenges facing the eastern and southern region of the Mediterranean. According to the project’s official Website, rising sea temperatures are the most important challenge facing the region, which, in turn, severely affects marine ecosystems and increases salinity, causing a change in the chemical composition of the water and ultimately endangering local biodiversity.
The project aims to replace the weak monitoring capabilities that created large gaps in climate data and affected the tourism sector and fisheries.
MEDITERRANEAN CLIMATE CHANGE: The initiative came in response to the recent classification of the Mediterranean Basin as one of the world’s climate-change hotspots on the part of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
The IPCC’s 2023 report on the state of the Mediterranean Sea warns that “climate anxiety related to the Basin is on the rise, due to the high population and economic density on its coasts, which increases the overlap of marine and terrestrial climate risks, and turns large areas of it into highly vulnerable areas to rapid changes.”
The report said that the Mediterranean had 542 million inhabitants in 2020 and that the number is expected to rise to 657 million by 2050 and 694 million by 2100. Meanwhile, the Basin is surrounded by high-value economic activities, including the growth of coastal cities, fishing and fisheries activities, and about a third of global tourism, as well as urbanisation, international maritime and commercial port networks and extensive agricultural areas close to the coast.
With its dense population and economic importance, the Mediterranean Basin is increasingly exposed to climate risks.
Sea surface temperatures have been rising at a rate of 0.29 to 0.44 degrees Celsius per decade since the early 1980s, while sea levels rose by about 1.4 mm per year throughout the 20th century, accelerating to nearly 2.8 mm annually between 1993 and 2018.
In the Southern and Eastern Mediterranean, these trends coincide with higher ambient temperatures, narrow belts of sand dunes, and rapid urbanisation, collectively straining the capacity of these regions to adapt and build climate resilience. Low-lying coastal areas are particularly vulnerable to climate hazards, including sea-level rise, flooding, and the intrusion of saltwater into agricultural land.
The scene is also becoming more complex. The Mediterranean Sea is at the confluence of disparate atmospheric circulation systems, which hinders the completion of monitoring and analysing climate change tasks. This results in clear gaps in data between the northern and southern banks of the Basin, according to the IPCC report.
THE NILE DELTA: Egypt’s Nile Delta is exposed to high risks resulting from climate change.
“The most prominent impact of climate change on Egypt’s Mediterranean coast is sea-level rise, increased water temperatures, and increased salinity,” warned Mohamed Said, a professor of marine sciences at the National Institute of Marine Sciences and Fisheries in Alexandria.
Said, who is also the EU project’s principal investigator in Egypt, further explained that “according to long-term future scientific predictions, global sea levels are expected to rise by about one metre by 2100.”
“The Nile Delta is already about two metres below sea level, which means that a level of three metres could result in the drowning of 12 to 15 per cent of the Delta’s area,” Said warned. “This rise in sea level would also threaten tourism and economic activities along Egypt’s Mediterranean coast.”
A study titled “Spatial Variations of the Sea Level Along the Egyptian Mediterranean Coast” co-prepared by Said in 2020 reveals a clear variation in the rates of sea-level rise along the coast.
According to the study, the Gulf of Abu Qir east of Alexandria recorded the highest annual rate of sea-level rise at 6.4 mm, followed by Port Said at 4.8 mm and Burlus at 3.8 mm. All three figures exceed the Egyptian Mediterranean coast’s average of 3.4 mm per year, which itself is higher than the global average recorded during the 20th century.
Said points out that “the danger of the accelerating rise toward the east is closely linked to land subsidence, a phenomenon that doubles the risk of flooding and saltwater intrusion into the soil, particularly in the Nile Delta.”
In its fourth assessment report, the IPCC classified Egypt’s northern coasts, especially those giving onto the Nile Delta, as one of the most sensitive areas to the effects of climate change and among the areas most vulnerable to the negative effects of these changes globally.
The Delta faces a direct risk of sea-level rise and saltwater intrusion into underground reservoirs. The Nile banks are at high risk of erosion, and low-level areas are exposed to flooding in the governorates of Beheira, Port Said, Damietta, Kafr Al-Sheikh, and Daqahliya.
Salt water may also seep into the soil of agricultural land in those governorates, where rapid agricultural and urban expansions are taking place.
The Nile Delta is the backbone of Egypt’s food security, accounting for 63 per cent of the country’s total agricultural land with an area of 6.6 million acres. It contributes around 60 per cent of Egypt’s overall food production and supplies a wide range of strategic crops, including wheat, rice, and corn, as well as cash and industrial crops, sugarcane, vegetables, potatoes, tomatoes, onions, and citrus fruits.
About 24 million people (more than a quarter of the population) depend on agriculture and fishing for their livelihood, directly or indirectly. Egypt has 9.4 million acres of arable agricultural land, which represents 89.6 per cent of the country’s total area, according to a report of the Central Agency for Mobilisation and Statistics (CAMPAS) on official data issued in 2023-2024.
In parallel with national efforts, notably the Integrated Coastal Zone Management project, which seeks to protect the Nile Delta and Egypt’s northern coasts and safeguard millions of people, vital infrastructure, and agricultural land, the IPCC report highlights a persistent challenge.
It notes that the lack of jointly produced climate knowledge among Mediterranean countries, particularly in the Southern and Eastern Mediterranean, remains one of the most significant barriers to the effective implementation of adaptation measures.
Its 2023 report on climate risks in the Mediterranean stresses that limited data and weak monitoring networks not only hinder understanding of the actual impacts of climate change, but also weaken the ability of countries to design actionable plans, stressing the need to promote collaborative scientific research and build joint monitoring networks between the North, South and Southeast countries of the Basin.
In the same context, an international study titled “Coastal Sea Level Monitoring in the Mediterranean and Black Seas” published in the journal Ocean Sciences in 2022, and in which 45 researchers from the Mediterranean countries participated, revealed clear observational gaps between the Northern and Southern Mediterranean.
The study included an assessment of 236 coastal monitoring stations, highlighting two main challenges: the gradual rise in sea levels as a result of climate change and sudden risks such as tsunamis.
The study confirmed that sea-level monitoring is no longer a purely scientific issue related to the understanding of tides but has become an issue that intersects with the national security of coastal states.
While Northern Mediterranean countries, such as Spain and Italy, have extensive and sophisticated monitoring networks, the southern and eastern coasts of the Basin suffer from a shortage of stations or the obsolescence of their technologies, reducing the accuracy of climate forecasts in highly sensitive areas, including the Nile Delta.
The results show a clear geographical imbalance in the distribution of monitoring stations, with the largest mass concentrated in the Northern Mediterranean, while large areas of North Africa lack sufficient real-time data.
The study concluded that “hourly” monitoring is no longer sufficient to deal with extreme phenomena, stressing the need to update stations to record data at least every minute, especially in the face of atmospheric tsunamis and severe storms.
The study stressed that measuring sea-level rise in isolation from land movement may lead to misleading readings, calling for linking coastal monitoring stations to global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) devices to distinguish sea level rise from land subsidence and ensuring “centimetre” accuracy in adaptation plans, especially in the Egyptian Delta.
MONITORING GAP: Said noted that the Interreg NEXT MED project represents a direct scientific response to these gaps.
“The project aims to intensify cooperation between the countries of the Basin in the exchange of climate data related to the ratios of different measurements of sea level,” he said, pointing out that “the difference in marine environments and patterns of climate change between Mediterranean countries does not diminish the value of the data exchanged, but rather enhances it.”
“Data from Cyprus or Greece, for example, are included in broader analytical models of the Mediterranean Basin as a whole, contributing to the production of more accurate and comprehensive forecasts,” he added.
The ultimate goal of these predictions is not to prevent sea-level rise, which is no longer possible, but to develop realistic adaptive solutions, which can be presented to decision-makers to reduce human and economic losses.
Tariq Al-Jaziri, a professor of marine physical sciences and a participant in the project, said that “the main objective of the MedJICARP project is to promote adaptation plans and mitigate the effects of climate change in the Eastern Mediterranean Basin.”
“Achieving this goal remains dependent on the availability of accurate and reliable scientific data.”
According to Al-Jaziri, the project relies on three main axes. The first is the establishment of an integrated monitoring system on the northern and southern coasts of the Mediterranean to collect high-resolution data and then analyse it to reach applicable scientific results.
The second axis is to share data through a central centre dedicated to the project, allowing researchers in the region to conduct independent analyses and temporal and spatial comparisons.
The third axis focuses on transferring the results to decision-makers, so that the data does not remain locked in drawers but is transformed into policies.
The main purpose of this rigorous monitoring is to produce scientific knowledge that can be directly used in the decision-making process, accompanied by clear proposals for adaptation solutions, to ensure a more effective and accurate response to escalating climate risks.
Al-Jaziri said that the monitoring systems adopted within the project include the HF Radar and SeaGuard stations.
“These are integrated measurement stations that are installed in specific coastal locations and measure the speed of water currents, wave movement, sea level, temperature, salinity, turbidity, and the amount of oxygen,” he told Al-Ahram Weekly.
The project also relies on tide gauges. Cyprus, Greece, Egypt, Lebanon, and Tunisia are involved in the installation of the devices needed for such gauges, with the quality of the devices varying according to the nature of each coastal site.
In addition, the project uses the FerryBox system, which is installed at the front of ships and commercial or tourist ferries and works according to agreements with the owner companies. The data collected is stored in internal units.
The project also includes drifters, which are floating units of measurement that move from the surface of the sea to the depths for specific distances, during which physical data is collected and then returned to the surface to transmit information via satellite. This part is being implemented by the team in Cyprus.
The fourth level is a central data storage unit that works through specialised servers that includes the data of researchers from all the participating countries. It is not limited to the publication of raw data but also includes data-quality control processes with the participation of research centres in France and Italy.
Said said that “one of the most prominent gains of the project is the improvement of the quality of climate data through modern high-resolution devices, which enhances the reliability of scientific results.”
“In addition, the project deepens research cooperation between the countries of the Eastern Mediterranean and makes temporal comparisons between new and previous data possible in order to understand the evolution of climate change in the Basin.”
He said that the project data “will not remain exclusive to the scientific community but aims to reach wider segments of society.”
The information will be disseminated to coastal communities in order to raise their awareness of potential risks and provide proactive warnings of extreme phenomena. Likewise, such data will be provided to NGOs to enhance their role in linking science to society, as well as to research centres, universities, local authorities and decision-makers.
The fishermen community will be provided with the data as they are among those initially most affected by marine climate change.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 26 March, 2026 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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