The future of the world’s coral reefs is uncertain, as the impact of global heating continues to escalate.
However, according to a study published today in Nature Climate Change, the response of the Great Barrier Reef to extreme temperatures in 2017 was markedly different to one year earlier, following two back-to-back bouts of coral bleaching. Remarkably, corals that bleached and survived 2016 were more resistant in 2017 to a recurrence of hot conditions.
“Dead corals don’t bleach for a second time. The north lost millions of heat-sensitive corals in 2016, and most of the survivors were the tougher species. As a result of bleaching, the mix of species is changing very rapidly,” said lead author Prof Terry Hughes, Director of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies (Coral CoE), headquartered at James Cook University.
“We were astonished to find less bleaching in 2017, because the temperatures were even more extreme than the year before,” he said. The new research highlights the extent of damage, or “geographic footprint” of multiple coral bleaching events across the 2,300 km length of the world-heritage listed area.
The back-to-back heatwaves bring the total number of mass bleaching events on the Great Barrier Reef to four over the past two decades (in 1998, 2002, 2016 and 2017). The scientists found that only 7% of the Great Barrier Reef escaped bleaching entirely since 1998, and after the 2017 event, 61% of reefs have now been severely bleached at least once.
Continue reading at ARC Centre of Excellence Coral Reef Studies
Image via Tane Sinclair-Taylor
