climate change tagged posts

Predictions of the death of the Great Barrier Reef are wide of the mark, according to one of the most prominent researchers in the field. Marine biologist David Bourne from James Cook University says global warming and other pressures will not end up destroying the reef – but will instead bring about major changes in biodiversity.

“There is always going to be winners and losers,” he says. “The reef is still going to be there, it just may be a very different reef to what we have today.”

And perhaps the key element in determining which species of coral thrive and which suffer in the reef’s future might be bacteria.

Bourne says the volcanic seeps in Papua New Guinea dramatically affect the diversity of coral reef species...

The researchers from UWA, the ARC Centre of Excellence and WA Marine Science Institution found Ningaloo Reef, which is still recovering from major bleaching in 2010-11, was not affected.

The 2016 global bleaching event was the third and longest on record and the Kimberley region was the hardest hit.

Between March and May 2016, the world’s oceans were 0...

Cool-water corals can adapt to a slightly warmer ocean, but only if global greenhouse gas emissions are reduced. That’s according to a study published November 1 in the journal Science Advances of genetic adaptation and the likely effects of future warming on tabletop corals in the Cook Islands.

The study found that some corals in the normally cool waters of the Cook Islands carry genetic variants that predispose them to heat tolerance. This could help the population adapt more quickly to rising temperatures. But the preliminary results show they may not adapt quickly enough to outpace climate change.

“These corals aren’t going to adapt at an unlimited rate,” said lead author Rachael Bay, a postdoctoral scholar at the University of California, Davis...

During the period of global warming at the close of the last ice age, Earth’s sea level did not rise steadily but rather in sharp, punctuated bursts when the planet’s glaciers melted, researchers report.

The researchers found fossil evidence in drowned reefs offshore Texas that showed sea level rose in several bursts ranging in length from a few decades to one century.

“What these fossil reefs show is that the last time Earth warmed like it is today, sea level did not rise steadily,” says coauthor André Droxler, a marine geologist from Rice University. “Instead, sea level rose quite fast, paused, and then shot up again in another burst and so on.

“This has profound implications for the future study of sea-level rise,” he says.

Because scientists did not previously have speci...

The recent international Ocean’s conference in New York culminated with a strong global commitment to “conserve and sustainably use our oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development.”

Oceans generate around half of all oxygen or “every second breathe” we take. How we move forward to protect, conserve and sustainably use this precious resource will affect all 7.5 billion people on earth. All our lives depend on it.

The geography of the Pacific region makes SDG 14 on “Life below Water” essential to all development in the Pacific...

Rising temperatures caused by climate change would be catastrophic for countries in Asia and the Pacific by the end of the century – unless countries work to mitigate it, says a report by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) released last month. The report titled “A Region at Risk: The Human Dimensions of Climate Change in Asia and the Pacific” says that under a “business-as-usual” approach to climate change, the impacts for the Asia and Pacific region are catastrophic.

With climate change, food production in the region will become a lot more difficult, causing production costs to increase.

According to a data summary, crops in the Pacific region will be in decline by 2050...

Countries with responsibility over world heritage-listed coral reefs should adopt ambitious climate change targets, aiming to cut greenhouse gas emissions to levels that would keep global temperature increases to just 1.5C, the UN agency responsible for overseeing world heritage sites has said.

At a meeting of Unesco’s world heritage committee in Kraków, Poland, a decision was adopted that clarified and strengthened the responsibility of countries that have custodianship over world-heritage listed coral reefs.

Until now, most countries have interpreted their responsibility over such reefs as implying they need to protect them from local threats such as water pollution and overfishing.

But between 2014 and 2017, reefs in every major reef region bleached, with much of the coral dying, in ...

A million plastic bottles are bought around the world every minute and the number will jump another 20% by 2021, creating an environmental crisis some campaigners predict will be as serious as climate change. New figures obtained by the Guardian reveal the surge in usage of plastic bottles, more than half a trillion of which will be sold annually by the end of the decade. The demand, equivalent to about 20,000 bottles being bought every second, is driven by an apparently insatiable desire for bottled water and the spread of a western, urbanised “on the go” culture to China and the Asia Pacific region.

More than 480bn plastic drinking bottles were sold in 2016 across the world, up from about 300bn a decade ago. If placed end to end, they would extend more than halfway to the sun...

Climate change from rising levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) is having two major effects in our seas – global warming and ocean acidification – and the combination of these threats is affecting marine life from single organisms to species communities. Researchers from the University of Portsmouth are helping to build an artificial reef that could protect vulnerable marine ecosystems in the Mediterranean Sea against climate change.

The reef is made of small plastic structures that mimic natural coralline algae (algae with calcium carbonate structures), which have a similar ecological function to corals. Coralline algae form reefs that are able to host different species to create highly diverse and complex environments.

Due to their calcium carbonate structures, coralline algae are extreme...

In the azure waters of the Red Sea, Maoz Fine and his team dive to study what may be the planet’s most unique coral: one that can survive global warming, at least for now.

The corals, striking in their red, orange and green colours, grow on tables some eight metres (26 feet) underwater, put there by the Israeli scientists to unlock their secrets to survival.

They are of the same species that grows elsewhere in the northern Red Sea and are resistant to high temperatures.

Fine’s team dives in scuba gear to monitor the corals, taking notes on water-resistant pads.

“We’re looking here at a population of corals on a reef that is very resilient to high temperature changes, and is most likely going to be the last to survive in a world undergoing very significant warming and acidification of sea w...