The Great Barrier Reef off the northeastern coast of Australia in December 2017. By Brady Dennis Brady Dennis Reporter focusing on environmental policy and public health issues Email Bio Follow April 3 at 1:00 PM The damage caused in recent years to the Great Barrier Reef by ocean heat waves has compromised the massive reef’s ability to recover, and climate change could make the problem more severe in the future, according to research published Wednesday.
“The replenishment ability of the reef has been diminished,” Terry Hughes, the study’s lead author and director of the Australian Research Council Center of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University in Queensland, said in an interview. “Our study shows that [corals] are pretty much struggling to cope with rapid-fire bleaching events.
According to Wednesday’s study, the number of new corals settling on the Great Barrier Reef declined by 89 percent after the recent bleaching events. In addition, because it can take a decade or longer for even the fastest-growing corals to recover, a reef needs a long respite to return to its former state.
Kim Cobb, a coral reefs expert and climate scientist at Georgia Tech University who was not involved in Wednesday’s study, called the work of gathering the data behind it “painstaking” and its findings “devastating.” “The big question right now is, do they have enough time to recover the basic functions that will make them more resilient in the next heat wave?” Cobb said. “How much can they come back? How much time do they have?”A study in the journal Science last year found that coral reefs around the globe are bleaching four to five times as frequently as they did around 1980.
“As global temperatures continue to rise,” the authors of Wednesday’s study wrote, “the probability of avoiding further bleaching events on the Great Barrier Reef in the next decade or two is vanishingly small.”
Just false.
So, who to sue/jail over ignoring this, letting it happen?
It isn’t just global warming. Our oceans are polluted with oil, trash, lead and radioactive isotopes. The end is near. Doesn’t matter where you heard it first, it’s coming anyways.
Last year an expert panel of international climate experts warned that coral structures - including the Great Barrier Reef - would most likely not survive a 2C rise.
We're killing Earth🙁
Which would you rather visit before it disappears?
What's the difference? We're all going to be dead in 11.5 years, anyway.
😂😂😂 clear propaganda
One scientist....seriously? One.
well, okay, you are worried, complained, got a fee! and how to solve the problem?
‘Might’ get worse?
Mention the President pls. 🙈
I agree somewhat w the 45th prez..If the water turned pinkish-red then we kno climate change is in that area
“Might”