If global temperatures continue rising, virtually all the corals in the Atlantic Ocean will stop growing and could succumb to erosion by the end of the century, a new study finds.
The analysis of over 400 existing coral reefs across the Atlantic Ocean estimates that more than 70 percent of the region’s reefs will begin dying by 2040 even under optimistic climate warming scenarios.
And if the planet exceeds 2 degrees Celsius of warming above preindustrial temperatures by the end of the century, 99 percent of corals in the region would meet this fate. Today, the planet has warmed about 1.3 degrees Celsius over preindustrial temperatures.
The implications are grave. Corals act as the fundamental building blocks of reefs, providing habitat for thousands of species of fish and other marine life. They are also bulwarks that break up waves and help protect shorelines from rising sea levels. A quarter of all ocean life depends on coral reefs and over a billion people worldwide benefit from them, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
To predict how future corals will fare in future conditions, scientists analyzed corals that grew over 10,000 years ago across the Caribbean, including those in the Florida Keys, Barbados and Costa Rica.
Many of the ancient remnants are now on islands in places where tectonic activity uplifted and exposed the seabed. These landscapes allow scientists to gather data that is impossible to get from living corals without damaging them.
“The reefs have changed so much that they’re not even slightly doing what the reefs of the past used to do,” said Alice Webb, a coral reef ecologist at the University of Exeter and one of the authors of the study, which was published Wednesday in the journal Nature.
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The post Corals Won’t Survive a Warmer Planet, a New Study Finds appeared first on New York Times.
