The Atlantic

Climate Change Could Destroy Even the Ocean's Most Pristine Parks

“Marine protected areas” have been an environmental success story. But a new study finds that most won’t withstand global warming.
Source: Divers swim over a bed of dead corals off Malaysia’s Tioman Island in May 2008.

“We should’ve known,” said John Bruno, “but we really didn’t.”

Bruno is a professor of marine biology at the University of North Carolina. Recently, he and his colleagues asked a simple question: If scientists know that climate change will alter national parks on land, how will it affect the thousands of national parks and conservation areas around the world that are underwater? The answer, published Monday in Nature Climate Change, shocked him.

But first: Yes, there are thousands of national parks. In the last few, expanding several national monuments created by his predecessor, President George W. Bush.

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