«It's time to shift this conversation to what can be done to conserve these amazing organisms in the face of this
unprecedented global bleaching event,» said Jennifer Koss, NOAA's Coral Reef Conservation Program director.
«With the third
global bleaching event underway, it has never been more urgent to understand the limits of coral thermal tolerance in corals,» says Professor McCulloch.
These observations confirmed predictions made by NOAA, giving the agency confidence in its forecast of a much
bigger global bleaching event brought about by El Niño.
Last week, scientists reported that half of Hawaii's coral reefs suffered serious bleaching in 2014 and 2015 as part of an ongoing, three -
year global bleaching event that researchers are still trying to get a handle on.
Following global average temperature records set in 2014, 2015, January, February and March, coral reefs from Florida to India have been devastated by the third
mass global bleaching event recorded.
«Unlike
past global bleaching events (in 1998 and 2010) that lasted less than twelve months, this event is in its 33rd month and shows no sign of stopping,» Eakin said.
«It's time to shift this conversation to what can be done to conserve these amazing organisms in the face of this
unprecedented global bleaching event,» says Jennifer Koss, coral reef conservation programme director at the NOAA.
The
first global bleaching event was in 1998 and the second in 2010, both in years marked by El Niños, the periodic climate phenomenon in the Pacific.
Between 2014 and 2016, the world witnessed the longest
global bleaching event ever recorded, which killed coral on an unprecedented scale.
How much will be left after
this global bleaching event?
One of these events,
a global bleaching event that began in 2014 and affected at least 70 percent of the world's reefs, just ended last year.
«This is the longest
global bleaching event we've ever recorded.»
This week,
the global bleaching event is on the minds of the world's top coral reef experts as they gather for the 13th International Coral Reef Symposium in Honolulu where the focus is bridging science to policy to achieve coral reef sustainability.
As part of a project documenting
the global bleaching event, he had surveyed Lizard Island, which sits about 90 km north of Cooktown in far north Queensland, when it was in full glorious health; then just as it started bleaching this year; then finally a few weeks after the bleaching began.
Three
global bleaching events have taken place since the 1980s, including one that is going on right now, as a result of climate change increasing acidity levels and temperatures in the world's oceans.
The Pacific Ocean has been the epicenter of
the global bleaching event and Christmas Island has been the tiny bullseye of that epicenter.
The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has declared
a global bleaching event, making this only the third such crisis in recorded history.
According to Mark Eakin, coordinator of Coral Reef Watch, the current bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef is part of
a global bleaching event that started in June 2014 and has been ongoing.
At that time the 1982 event was described as «the most widespread coral bleaching and mortality in recorded history» but today there is debate about whether it and the 1987 events» severity was bad enough to count as a true «
global bleaching event».
Nick Graham from James Cook University showed last year that almost 60 % of reefs in the Seychelles recovered after they lost 90 % of their coral following the 1998
global bleaching event.
inety nine percent of 500 coral reefs surveyed in the Australian Great Barrier Reef's pristine north are being hit by
a global bleaching event that's already slammed reefs in the...
As part of a project documenting
the global bleaching event, he had surveyed Lizard Island, which sits about 90 km north of Cooktown in far north Queensland, when it was in full glorious health; then just as it started bleaching this year; then finally a few weeks after the bleaching began.
«It's time to shift this conversation to what can be done to conserve these amazing organisms in the face of this unprecedented
global bleaching event,» says Jennifer Koss, coral reef conservation programme director at the NOAA.