The Great Barrier Reef and climate change

Great Barrier Reef, Queensland Australia

New Australian research casts doubt on the forecasts that the Great Barrier Reef will be destroyed within a generation by climate change, while finding that corals are capable of better adaptation than previously believed.  The study, reported in the international journal Science, accepts that reefs are threatened by global warming and are already deteriorating but not at a rate which predictions given for the Great Barrier Reef.

Coral reefs are, by nature, highly diverse and resilient, and could cope with climate change in various ways. In the conclusion, the research report  states that “New knowledge confirms that coral reefs, at least as presently structured, are indeed threatened by climate change, but that current projections of global-scale collapse of reefs within the next few decades probably overestimate the rapidity and spatial homogeneity of the decline"

Prominent reef scientist Ove Hoegh-Guldberg said in April 2011 the reef would die unless carbon emissions were dramatically cut within the next decade.

The review of the science on global reef health by Professor Connolly and three other leading researchers, including Dr John Pandolfi of Queensland University, found that recent mathematical modelling of coral thermal tolerances suggested a wide range of outcomes, from a complete collapse of reefs by mid-century to maintenance of existing coral cover to 2100 and beyond.

The study stated that abundant evidence of coral sensitivity to ocean warming and acidification had played a key role in many predictions that the disappearance of coral reefs on a global scale will be irreversibly under way within a matter of decades.  However, this may not "adequately take account" of the capacity of corals to cope with and adapt to environmental stress. On the negative side, the Great Barrier Reef was more vulnerable to acidification hitting calcium carbonate levels, which are the building blocks of coral growth.

Science 22 July 2011:
Vol. 333 no. 6041 pp. 418-422
DOI: 10.1126/science.1204794