400-year record heat could threaten Great Barrier Reef
A study of samples taken from the centuries old coral that makes up the Great Barrier Reef has shown the threat that climate change can pose to it. Australian researchers say that high temperatures in and around the coral reef overt the last decade are the highest on record for four centuries. Extreme heat has already been responsible for five mass bleaching events in just the last nine years.
Writing in the journal Nature, the researchers behind the study attribute the increase in temperature, caused by climate change, as posing an “existential threat” to the coral. “The science tells us that the Great Barrier Reef is in danger – and we should be guided by the science,” Prof Helen McGregor, from the University of Wollongong, told BBC News.
The latest evidence comes from within the natural wonder itself. Over many years, marine scientists have collected cores, samples drilled out of the skeletons of the coral. These provide chemical indicators about the environment around the reef and how it has changed and developed.
Coral are animals and not plants. They can live for centuries and lay down chemical clues about their natural environment. The Australian team re-examined the data from thousands of these cores, cross referencing them with historical sea temperature records from the Hadley Centre in the UK. They found that the temperatures around the reef in just the last decade is the warmest over the past 400 years.
“The recent events in the Great Barrier Reef are extraordinary,” said lead researcher Dr Benjamin Henley of Wollongong University, who carried out the study. “Unfortunately, this is terrible news for the reef.”
“There is still a glimmer of hope though,” he added. “If we can come together and restrict global warming, then there’s a glimmer of hope for this reef, and others around the world, to survive in their current state.”
Image: Ank Kumar
