The Great Barrier Reef Is Probably Doomed No Matter What
A new study suggests that even slight amounts of global warming will devastate Australia and destroy its famous reef.
Early last year, the Great Barrier Reef in Australia underwent a once-in-a-lifetime calamity. Ocean temperatures around the reef rose far above normal. The extra heat turned corals bone-white and caused them to expel the symbiotic algae which feed them from inside their branches. Overcooked, starving, and vulnerable to disease, vast swaths of the world’s largest reef died.
The summer of 2016 remains one of the ever observed—a level of devastation that scientists didn’t expect to see until the 2050s. A new study argues that it will not remain a rare event for long. Even in simulations of the most hopeful global-warming scenarios, modern climate models suggest that ocean temperatures
