by Anthony Watts, August 17, 2018 in WUWT
From the “science eventually self-corrects” department, new science showing coral bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef is a centuries-old problem, well before “climate change” became a buzzword and rising CO2 levels were blamed.
Marc Hendrickx writes:
New paper shows coral bleaching in GBR extending back 400+ years.
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by Anthony Watts, August 4, 2018 in WUWT
MIAMI—New research shows that not all corals respond the same to changes in climate. The University of Miami (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science-led study looked at the sensitivity of two types of corals found in Florida and the Caribbean and found that one of them—mountainous star coral—possesses an adaptation that allows it to survive under high temperatures and acidity conditions.
“Stressful periods of high temperature and increasingly acidic conditions are becoming more frequent and longer lasting in Florida waters,” said Chris Langdon, marine biology and ecology professor and lead author on the new study. “However, we found that not all coral species are equally sensitive to climate change and there’s hope that some species that seemed doomed may yet develop adaptations that will allow them to survive as well.”
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by JoNova, June 12, 2018 inJoNovaBlog
After half a billion million years of climate change, I’m shocked, shocked I tell you, that life on Earth (and specifically corals) have so many ways to cope with the climate changing. After all, it’s natural (if you are trained by Greenpeace) to assume that corals can only survive in a world with one constant stable temperature just like they never had.
One more tool in the coral-reef-workshop
Corals don’t just have a tool-box, they have a Home Depot Warehouse. h/t to GWPF
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by Ross C.L. et al., 2017, June 10, 2018 in CO2Science
The global increase in the atmosphere’s CO2 content has been hypothesized to possess the potential to harm coral reefs directly. By inducing changes in ocean water chemistry that can lead to reductions in the calcium carbonate saturation state of seawater (Ω), it has been predicted that elevated levels of atmospheric CO2 may reduce rates of coral calcification, possibly leading to slower-growing — and, therefore, weaker — coral skeletons, and in some cases even death.
As we have previously pointed out on our website, however (see The End of the Ocean Acidification Scare for Corals and A Coral’s Biological Control of its Calcifying Medium to Favor Skeletal Growth), such projections often fail to account for the fact that coral calcification is a biologically mediated process, and that out in the real world, living organisms tend to find ways to meet and overcome the many challenges they face; and coral calcification in response to ocean acidification is no exception.
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by S. Xu et al., December 2017, in AGU1000Biogeosciences
Coral bleaching is becoming a serious issue for coral reefs under the stress of global warming. However, whether it has occurred in the past in times of thermal stress remains unclear. Moreover, an understanding of historic coral bleaching events would greatly improve our insight into the adaptive capabilities of corals under such stresses. It is known that Porites corals, a massive coral, have relatively high levels of symbiotic zooxanthellae and a strong thermal tolerance when compared with most other corals (and particularly branched corals). Thus, growth hiatuses and/or mortality surfaces of fossil Porites may be used to indicate past ecological or environmental stress events, such as severe bleaching. In this study, monthly geochemical and isotopic environmental proxies of four fossil Porites corals with well‐preserved growth hiatuses and mortality surfaces (aged 3,800–4,200 years before 2013 A.D.), collected from Wenchang fringing reef, Hainan Island, Northern South China Sea were analyzed. Specifically, the Sr/Ca, δ18O, and δ13C were measured with a monthly resolution for each sample.
by University of California – Irvine, April 26, 2018 in ScienceDaily
By taking a closer look, scientists find resilience in face of heat stress.
Coral reef bleaching is stark evidence of the damage being inflicted by global climate change on marine ecosystems, but a research team has found some cause for hope. While many corals are dying, others are showing resilience to increased sea surface temperatures, pointing to possible clues to the survival and recovery of these vitally important aquatic habitats (…)
See aslo here
by Kate Wheeling, April 19, 2018 in PacificStandard
Coral reefs are facing no shortage of threats including ocean acidification, overfishing, plastic pollution, and rising temperatures. Sea surface temperatures have been climbing on average for over a century, and ocean heat waves—which can trigger coral bleaching events—are becoming more common and severe. Scientists have long worried that as coral-killing spikes in temperature become more frequent, corals won’t have enough time to recover between bleaching events and will ultimately go extinct. But a new paper, published today in PLoS Genetics, suggests that corals might be able to adapt to another century of warming.
by University of Sydney, September 28, 2017 in WUWT
Recent findings suggest that episodes of very rapid sea-level rise of about 20m in less than 500 years occurred in the last deglaciation, caused by periods of catastrophic ice-sheet collapse as the Earth warmed after the last ice age about 20,000 years ago.
Lead author, PhD candidate at the University of Sydney, Kelsey Sanborn, has shown this sea-level rise event was associated with “drowning” or death of coral reefs in Hawaii.
See also here
