Intense thunderstorms are forecast across parts of the Gulf on Monday and Tuesday, bringing very high rainfall to the region and a significant flooding risk in parts.

Low pressure over the Arabian peninsula will deepen on Monday while a flow of moist tropical air moves into the region, significantly enhancing the production of showers as a result.

Shower activity will increase through Monday with the development of a line of severe thunderstorms to the east of Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, which will push onwards into southern parts of the United Arab Emirates. Heavy downpours are expected, with some places expected to get up to 40mm of rain within three hours, alongside outbreaks of hail. Blustery conditions are also anticipated, with the risk of dust storms that could hinder visibility.

Widespread thunderstorms will continue to develop within the Gulf overnight, pushing farther north into the UAE and dominating the forecast throughout Tuesday. By the time thunderstorms ease on Tuesday evening, about 40mm of rain is expected to have fallen widely across northern parts of the UAE within 24 hours, with more than 100mm possible for the northernmost tip of the country.

Dubai, which typically receives about 7mm on average for the entire month of April, may get up to 100mm, with even higher totals possible.

Much of Europe has been undergoing exceptionally mild conditions for the time of year, with a multitude of records broken in Spain and France over the weekend. Temperatures in northern parts of Spain were akin to those usually experienced in summer, with highs in the 30s celsius. The maximum temperature recorded was 33.5C on Saturday at Miranda de Ebro in Castilla y Leon.

Meanwhile, more than 150 maximum monthly temperature records were broken on the same day in France, with a peak of 32.4C at Sabres. However, this is soon to change, with much cooler conditions forecast this week across much of Europe, bringing the potential for overnight frost.

Finally, it has been confirmed that March 2024 was the warmest on record globally. This is also the 10th consecutive month that has broken the average global temperature record for that month. While the heat can be linked to El Niño’s ongoing phase in the Pacific Ocean, climate scientists are concerned that records may continue to fall, even as El Niño tapers off in the coming months.

France has been accused of hypocrisy by conservationists over a fresh post-Brexit dispute with the UK over fishing rights.

France launched an official protest after the UK banned bottom trawling from parts of its territorial waters last month, with the aim of protecting vulnerable habitats.

The ban on bottom trawling – a hugely damaging fishing technique that drags heavy nets along the seabed – covers British as well as EU vessels, and applies to 13 marine protected areas (MPAs), covering 4,000 sq km.

French diplomats claimed the move breached the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA), which could lead to punitive measures against the UK if an arbitration tribunal rules in France’s favour.

Charles Clover, director of the Blue Marine Foundation, a UK-based conservation organisation, said the TCA clearly permitted fishing restrictions provided they were applied equally.

“This is hypocrisy by the French,” he said. “They are not looking at the small print.

“They are playing a ludicrous ideological game against their own rightwing parties, grabbing back support from the trawlermen and not looking at what the rules are.”

The Paris-based environmental group Bloom said it would consider legal action against France if it continued the dispute.

Claire Nouvian, head of Bloom, said the French president, Emmanuel Macron, was showing the world his true ideological stripes.

“It is an embarrassment for France, who say they are champions of the world’s oceans, to do this,” she said.

“It highlights the discrepancy between their words and their actions. If they keep going down that route, we will look into litigation ourselves to sue the French government.”

Many trawlers operating out of Boulogne depend on the restricted areas for much of their catch. Far-right politicians have backed the trawler operators, with Rassemblement National, the parliamentary party led by Marine Le Pen, stepping up rhetoric on the issue.

The party in the northern Hauts-de-France region, in a post on X, accused the UK of threatening the survival of the industry.

Last year, an editorial in Nature magazine described France – which held a global oceans summit in 2022 and is hosting next year’s UN ocean conference – as being among the countries undermining progress towards ocean sustainability because it opposed a ban on bottom trawling in marine protected areas in the EU.

In 2022, France, the UK and Costa Rica launched the High Ambition Coalition for Nature & People to push for protecting 30% of land and sea by 2030 (known as the “30×30” target).

Nouvian said: “The TCA language is precise. It’s not discrimination to implement what the scientists have been saying and what member states have been talking about in their 30×30 plans.”

She noted that all member states were expected to ban bottom trawling in MPAs by 2030 under the EU’s ocean action plans.

A UK government spokesperson said: “We are proud of our strong record of safeguarding our oceans and the precious species that depend on them. The recent decision to prohibit bottom trawling, which applies to all vessels –including British ones – followed extensive consultation with a range of stakeholders, including UK and French fishing organisations.

“It represents a significant step in protecting our vulnerable and ecologically valuable rock and reef habitats, where the scientific evidence has demonstrated the negative impact of bottom-towed fishing gear.”

Officials from the European Commission were meeting their French and UK counterparts on Monday to discuss the issue.

A commission spokesperson said: “We are having a meeting to share information on adopted, or about to be adopted, measures, as part of our technical exchanges.”

It is the second dispute this year over the UK’s marine conservation measures. In February, Denmark and Sweden asked the EU to intervene after the UK closed part of the Dogger Bank fishing grounds in the North Sea to protect seabirds.

A climate-disrupted ocean is pushing sharks, rays and other species to flee ever-hotter water in the tropics, only for them to be killed by increasingly intense upwells of cold water from the depths, a study has found.

One of the authors of the paper described the “eerie” aftermath of a mass die-off of more than 260 marine organisms from 81 species in a singular event of extreme cold upwelling off the coast of South Africa in 2021.

The paper, published in Nature Climate Change on Monday, found that shifts in ocean currents and pressure systems driven by climate breakdown were increasing the frequency and intensity of upwellings, which may in turn increase the vulnerability of migratory species such as bull sharks.

Scientists focused on the mass die-off event in 2021, which they were able to track in unusually precise detail because one of affected creature that survived was a bull shark that had been satellite tagged. They found it had been caught in water that fell more than 10C below the temperature that such tropical species were used to.

The paper details how the shark changed its behaviour in an attempt to avoid the cold areas. It swam much closer to the surface than normal and moved outside its normal migration pattern.

Many of the affected sea creatures’ carcasses washed up on the shore of South Africa, including the pup of a big manta ray that had been aborted by its traumatised mother.

“It was eerie to see so many species washed up dead,” said Ryan Daly, one of the authors of the paper. He said he was surprised that even the very mobile species, such as manta rays and bull sharks, were caught in the upwelling. “You’d think they would have swum away but they got squeezed. They couldn’t escape,” he said.

To understand the broader trends behind the die-off, the scientists tagged other sharks and used 41 years of sea surface temperature data and 33 years of wind records to investigate the frequency and intensity of cold “killer events” inshore of the Indian Ocean’s Agulhas current and the east Australian current in the past 30 years.

They found cold upwelling events had increased in frequency and intensity in these regions between 1981 and 2022. Other species killed in such events include whale sharks, convict surgeonfish, bigeye trevallies and common blacktip sharks.

Tagged bull sharks appeared to change their behaviour to avoid sudden temperature drops by swimming closer to the surface, sheltering in bays and estuaries and only moving to the extent of their poleward distribution during warm seasons.

The marine biologists worked with oceanographers to map upwelling trends and forecast what could happen in the future as climate disruption becomes ever more pronounced and extreme cold upwellings increase in frequency along with periods of extreme surface heat.

Within individual species, certain groups tend to live on the edge of their population range. Daly said these groups were most vulnerable to the sudden and protracted temperature shifts. “There are bull sharks that run the gauntlet of a cool area to get to thermal refuges. Upwellings could kill off this unique genetic diversity.”

He said the findings suggested the need for a new approach to marine conservation that incorporated knowledge about the increasingly complex ways that climate chaos is affecting marine species. “We need to think about expanding conservation areas and prioritising different species,” he said. “We need to think out of the box.”