The bleaching events we've already seen in recent years are a result of the world warming by 1.2 degree Celsius since pre-industrial times. Whether we still have a functioning Great Barrier Reef in the decades to come depends on how much higher we allow global temperatures to rise.
We found these bouts of extreme temperatures have transformed it into a checkerboard of bleached reefs with very different recent histories. We measured the impacts of five marine heatwaves on the Great Barrier Reef over the past three decades: in 1998, 2002, 2016, 20. Just 2% of the Great Barrier Reef remains untouched by bleaching since 1998 and 80% of individual reefs have bleached severely once, twice or three times since 2016, our new study reveals today.
0 kommentar(er)
