Scientists have carried out a trial of prototype cloud brightening equipment on the Great Barrier Reef they hope could be scaled up to shade and cool corals and protect them from bleaching caused by rising global temperatures.
The Australian summer just gone will be remembered as the moment when human-caused climate change struck hard. First came drought, then deadly bushfires, and now a bout of coral bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef – the third in just five years.
As global heating makes coral bleaching a regular event, scientists are urgently seeking ways to help the world’s biggest reef survive...When coral scientist Dr Zoe Richards left the Great Barrier Reef’s Lizard Island in late January, she was feeling optimistic. Richards is a taxonomist.
The Great Barrier Reef is suffering its third mass bleaching event in five years. It follows the record-breaking mass bleaching event in 2016 that killed a third of Great Barrier Reef corals, immediately followed by another in 2017.
Rising ocean temperatures could have pushed the world’s tropical coral reefs over a tipping point where they are hit by bleaching on a “near-annual” basis, according to the head of a US government agency program that monitors the globe’s coral reefs. Dr Mark Eakin, coordinator of Coral Reef Watch
The government agency responsible for the Great Barrier Reef has confirmed the natural landmark has suffered a third mass coral bleaching episode in five years, describing the damage as “very widespread”.
The Great Barrier Reef has experienced a third mass coral bleaching event in five years, according to the scientist carrying out aerial surveys over hundreds of individual reefs.
The Great Barrier Reef is still at risk of a widespread outbreak of coral bleaching despite a cyclone to the far west helping to temporarily cool stressed corals, according to US and Australian science agencies.
The Great Barrier Reef could be heading for a third major coral bleaching outbreak in the space of five years if high ocean temperatures in the region do not drop in the next two weeks, scientists and conservationists have warned.
Aerial surveys by the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies in Townsville, Australia, revealed that two-thirds of the Great Barrier Reef had severely paled in 2016 and 2017, “bleaching” under the extreme stress of marine heat waves that can kill corals.