From Georgia Tech and the “it’s your SUV that’s killing the coral reefs today, why can’t you get that through your head” department comes this inconvenient study.
La Nina-like conditions associated with 2,500-year-long shutdown of coral reef growth
A new study has found that La Niña-like conditions in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Panamá were closely associated with an abrupt shutdown in coral reef growth that lasted 2,500 years. The study suggests that future changes in climate similar to those in the study could cause coral reefs to collapse in the future.
The study found cooler sea temperatures, greater precipitation and stronger upwelling — all indicators of La Niña-like conditions at the study site in Panama — during a period when coral reef accretion stopped in this region around 4,100 years ago. For the study, researchers traveled to Panama to collect a reef core, and then used the corals within the core to reconstruct what the environment was like as far back as 6,750 years ago.
“Investigating the long-term history of reefs and their geochemistry is something that is difficult to do in many places, so this was a unique opportunity to look at the relationship between reef growth and environment,” said Kim Cobb, an associate professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology. “This study shows that there appears to have been environmental triggers for this well-documented reef collapse in Panama.”
The study was sponsored by the Geological Society of America, the American Museum of Natural History and the Smithsonian Institution’s Marine Science Network. The study is scheduled for publication on February 23 in the journal Nature Climate Change. The study was a collaboration with the Florida Institute of Technology, with Cobb’s lab providing an expertise in fossil coral analysis.
Climate change is the leading cause of coral-reef degradation. The global coral reef landscape is now characterized by declining coral cover, reduced growth and calcification, and slowdowns in reef accretion. The new study provides data to assist scientists in understanding how changes in the environment trigger long-term changes in coral reef growth and ecosystem function, which is a critical challenge to coral-reef conservation.
“Temperature was a key cause of reef collapse and modern temperatures are now within several degrees of the maximum these reefs experienced over their 6,750 year history,” said Lauren Toth, the study’s lead author, who was a graduate student at Florida Tech during the study. “It’s possible that anthropogenic climate change may once again be pushing these reefs towards another regional collapse.”
For the study, the research team analyzed a 6,750-year-old coral core from Pacific Panamá. The team then reconstructed the coral’s past functions, such as growth and accretion (accumulation of layers of coral), and compared that to surrounding environmental conditions before, during and after the 2,500-year hiatus in vertical accretion.
“We saw evidence for a different climate regime during that time period,” Cobb said. “The geochemical signals were consistent with a period that is very cool and very wet, with very strong upwelling, which is more like a modern day La Niña event in this part of the Pacific.”
In Pacific Panamá, La Niña-like periods are characterized by a cold, wet climate with strong seasonal upwelling. Due to limited data at the site, the researchers cannot quantify the intensity of La Niña events during this time, but document that conditions similar to La Niña were present at this site during this time.
“These conditions would have been for quite an extended time, which suggests that the reef was quite sensitive to prolonged change in environmental conditions,” Cobb said. “So sensitive, in fact, that it stopped accreting over that period.”
Future climate change, similar to the changes during the hiatus in coral growth, could cause coral reefs to behave similarly, the study authors suggest, leading to another shutdown in reef development in the tropical eastern Pacific.
“We are in the midst of a major environmental change that will continue to stress corals over the coming decades, so the lesson from this study is that there are these systems such as coral reefs that are sensitive to environmental change and can go through this kind of wholesale collapse in response to these environmental changes,” Cobb said.
Future work will involve expanding the study to include additional locations throughout the tropical Pacific.
“A broad-scale perspective on long-term reef growth and environmental variability would allow us to better characterize the environmental thresholds leading to reef collapse and the conditions that facilitate survival,” Toth said. “A better understanding of the controls on reef development in the past will allow us to make better predictions about which reefs may be most vulnerable to climate change in the future.”
###
This research is supported by a Graduate Student Research Grant from the Geological Society of America, the American Museum of Natural History’s Lerner-Gray Fund for Marine Research, and grants from the Smithsonian Institution’s Marine Science Network. Any conclusions or opinions are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the sponsoring agencies.
Citation
Lauren T. Toth, et al. “Climatic and biotic thresholds of coral-reef shutdown.” (Nature Climate Change, February 2015) http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2541
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But…but…but…CO2!!!!
Climate change is the leading cause of coral-reef degradation.
===
That’s nice…we’ve solved that runoff, sedimentation, pollution problem
…
Did they really just use a cold limiting..to prove warm limiting?
Sounds like it.
But maybe they’re redefining Climate Change to be (AGC)&emdash;Anthropogenic Global Cooling—and abandoning (AGW).
…its an evidence free assertion. A common tactic when the data shows you the opposite of your a priori expectation. The statement then becomes a declaration of faith needed to get past the Nature jounal AGW cognoscenti and the AGW reviewers in order to be accepted for publication.
Yes. Most coastal coral reef problems have nothing to do with CAGW.
Rud Istvan! (eye roll) How could ANYTHING have something to do with CAGW?
(btw: I got that gift card (yea!) and would have ordered your book 🙁 … but, it required that one own a Kindle and I didn’t want to use almost all my gift just to pay for one (don’t want one, except to read your e book).
Just wanted you to know I followed through on my promise (until it proved to be impractical for me — sorry).
So! I’ll make up for my not purchasing your fine book by advertising it here:
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51v8Jh8n5OL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-v3-big,TopRight,0,-55_SX278_SY278_PIkin4,BottomRight,1,22_AA300_SH20_OU01_.jpg
Best wishes for excellent sales!
Janice
Janice, thanks. But my ebook publisher does not require a Kindle device. Only the free Kindle SW reader on any platform. Also on iBooks for iPad, Kobo, B&N Nook… I use an old cheap iPad, and both the iBook and Kindle apps on it fixing typos and working toward a second edition.
Is hardware independent.
Thanks for the technical advice, Rud Istvan. I was mistaken. I don’t have any of those other things either (I mistakenly thought I could just download it to my laptop as a .pdf). I much prefer paper books. If I get one of those devices, I will buy your book!
Janice Moore (replying to Rud Istvan)
I’ve got two Kindles – The older one is a grey-scale simple reader – good for stuffing a lot of novels into an airplane seat back or a hotel room. It’s got over 210 already loaded and read. The second, a Kindle Fire, is a color-display, touch-screen model That one is much, much better for scientific books because the color, high-density screen display graphs and charts better. But I’ve only loaded about 115 books on it. Haven’t had it as long.
lately, after buying a novel or sci fi book, I just download it to both versions as a default.
I thought there was a PC application that allowed you to “play” kindle books on the laptop.
Hi, R. A.,
I wrote so sloppily! Yes, yes, I think I could have bought a sort of “app” to use the Kindle on my laptop — it still cost the bulk of my gift card, so… . 🙂
And I really much, MUCH, prefer paper books (unless it was an interactive-dependent one like maps that can be manipulated, etc…). One or two good ones is all I need to bring with me.
Thanks for trying to help me and HAPPY READING to you.
#(:))
Janice
Janice, Calibre will read most documents and can be downloaded to PC.
“It’s possible that anthropogenic climate change may once again be pushing these reefs towards another regional collapse.” So last time it was natural climate variation but this time it’s man’s fault?
No, no, no! Toth said “once again”; therefore, the last time there was a regional collapse it was also due to “anthropogenic climate change.”
LOL. She did! #(:))
It was as warm as today (graph featured on Gavin’s blog)
http://www.realclimate.org/images/Marcott.png
Gavin has this on his blog!!! Where was he when Marcotte was fileted by McIntyre for not realizing that even if the proxy was decent, it wasn’t in annual resolution. With 100% certainty, a record like this made up of century and more averaging would have had spikes removed. Gavin should average the entire instrumental record to get his data point!!
If you think for 1 minute that .4 C covers 8000 years, you are not smart. What kind of filter is he using? 100 year smoothing?
.4 C barely covers year – to – year variation in the satellite era.
“It’s possible that anthropogenic climate change may once again be pushing these reefs towards another regional collapse.”
Once again a case of “having it both ways”. “Warm climate causes coral reef collapse” to “Cold climate causes coral reef collapse”.
Lmao.
It is the funding collapse that is the one that they are really, really worried about.
I think it’s the rapid change in temperatures. See graph two comments above.
Since “anthropogenic climate change” has never been proven to exist…
they might as well have said: “{Leprechauns} may once again be pushing … .”
All climate studies must reflect that it is bad and all of it is caused by man. Give me money. I don’t care what I’m doing to science to get money.
“Temperature was a key cause of reef collapse and modern temperatures are now within several degrees of the maximum these reefs experienced over their 6,750 year history,” said Lauren Toth, the study’s lead author,…”
“In Pacific Panamá, La Niña-like periods are characterized by a cold, wet climate with strong seasonal upwelling.”
+++++++
So we are near max and that could cause collapse, but it was the cold that done them in last time and it is climate change what is doing it no matter what.
COLD and WET. We have NO crops that will grow during such, either. Other than for molds and fungi, very little can thrive, cold and wet. GK
Bummer. There goes my winter wheat crop. Better sell the combine.
Plowed under 100 acres winter wheat, last spring, after a hard winter. Replanted early corn. Worked out well. Combine still there. GK
How’s the still? Still out back, waiting for fuel and fodder (er, sugar) 8<)
Was being tongue-in-cheek. Sold off everything except 1/2 section of pasture with 15 acres of woods in it a few years ago. Combine is long gone too. (Not sayin’ nothin’ ’bout no still…) These days we play ranch on the pasture (20 head and a kid horse) and I use the woods as combo winter heat fuel and gym. Better workout and less boring than a treadmill and cheaper than propane. A few guys I know North of us had a similar prob with the wheat last year but locally most did OK. But we’re only at about 43° North.
Perhaps aliens driving big hummers were causing the C02 problems, back then. But since they’re gone, and the lefties cannot extort money out of them, we are expected to shoulder the blame for any problem that comes along, and therefore, we are being robbed, to allegedly, “save our planet”. It is such an absolute scam, it is hard to believe even the slowest of people couldn’t see through it.
Apparently toilet paper is worth more than graduate degrees from Georgia Tech.
I will admit that the open mind these researchers have is a wonderful thing. Open to the idea of further research, that is, not to actually doing anything that might prove to be useful when interpreted the way they do, with the exception of paying off their college debts and “making a living,” something they are willing to deny millions of others from doing.
“Warm climate causes coral reef collapse” vs. “Cold climate causes coral reef collapse”.
Which is it?
Why can’t it be both?
According to NOAA the corals found in tropical reefs prefer temperatures between 73F and 84F (23C-29C) and can tolerate temps as low as 64F(18C) or as high as 104F (40C) for brief periods. http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/coralwaters.html
“It’s possible that anthropogenic climate change may once again be pushing these reefs towards another regional collapse.”
They claim the collapse comes from colder ocean temperatures, La Nina predominant conditions. This spell lasted from ~2000BC to 500AD, to put dates on it. Sea level was rapidly increasing, looks like a meter a century for a few centuries 4K years ago:
http://i62.tinypic.com/nchybs.jpg
So the oceans were rising 3-5X the current rate, but we have unprecidented, life-hobbling warming today. In contrast, modern CO2 obviously pales in light of this superior previous forcing, whatever it was.
Fairbridge was a strong opponent of CAGW, largely because of his own research into sea level variation.
It is notable that excluding the dip in the curve, the period in question seems to have an estimate sea level between about 1 and 3 meters above present levels. I have never seen figures supporting that extreme, but over many parts of the globe there does seem to be support for a Holocene high stand about 1.5 meters above present levels.
From what I have read about archaeologic digs in the southern US, along the Gulf Coast, the shore line was 50 miles north of present, indicating a sea level 6 feet above today’s, 4000 years ago.
Jolly good show.
Did they see what happened between the years 995 and say 1400, or the Medieval Warm period, or a bit further back still to the Roman Warm Period? And – what happened in the 6,750-year-old coral core during The Little Ice Age (LIA)?
More Grant Money is obviously needed for any “Study” of this kind
What really kills coral: a falling sea level.
But a rising sea level fosters coral growth and a steady sea level stymies new growth.
No need to wring one’s hands over coral.
since they put a ban on coral being used for building on pacific islands back in the early 1990s the coral has recovered and 80% of the islands are now stable or growing.
Michael Mann has said that global warming would lead to La Nina like conditions.
Well allrighty, then. Michael Mann said it, that settles it.
No. MM states over and over again we will see more frequent Super El Nino conditions and a general warming of the oceans. You know, that pesky hide and seek missing heat!
When the Anthropocene Jihadists at GISS, Guardian, Penn State U. and NYT get word of this they will try to get the graduate student thrown out on a Title IX presumptive-violation.
I am waiting for them to discover that the most recent glacial period shut down the growth of the Great Barrier Reef when it suddenly found itself 100 meters above sea level baking in the sun.
“Did they really just use a cold limiting..to prove warm limiting?”
Yes, the bottom line is that we have humans that know what the perfect amount of CO2 in the atmosphere should be and what the perfect temperature should be at. Both those levels should be what they were before humans started burning fossil fuels.
This means that there is too much CO2 in the air right now and global temperatures are too warm. The objective is not to observe nature(and the widespread, positive response) but to assume that humans burning fossil fuels are changing CO2 levels much too fast and it is harmful.
All models and studies should start with this assumption because we should put our trust in those humans that tell us that they can save the planet if we just cut our CO2 pollution.
Not nearly as much mention of the other toxic stuff we spew into the air, water and soils or wasting of natural resources or bad environmental policies. That would just distract us from the objective of getting the real villain…….carbon dioxide.
These humans also know what the exact level and ph of the oceans should be, the exact amount of ice in polar regions should be and which pole(North) actually matters. They know what the population of every creature on the planet should be and how much rain/snow should fall as well as where droughts should be every year. They know that photosynthesis is an insignificant law, which carries no weight in this discussion.
They used to know things like how many tornadoes and hurricanes there should be but are waiting for a while before they let us know again about those weather elements.
They have made up for that in the last decade by letting us know where heavy snow and blizzards should and should not be. In fact, our country’s climate change czar, Dr. John Holdren, a leader of these enlightened humans, was nice enough to tell us last Winter about where extreme cold should and should not be and explained to us how CO2 is playing a role.
http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2014/01/john-holdren-video-polar-vortex
No question that these enlightened humans will continue to have much more to tell us about what sort of weather and climate we should and should not be having and what is causing it and most importantly, what we should do about it.
Please don’t check their data or the accuracy of their claims. This would be very insulting to these authorities/experts and considered anti science and interpreted as an attempt to sabotage their effort to enlighten us and save the planet.
Sounds like a modern version of Noah and the arc. Build a ship, wait for the sea level to rise and decide who gets on and who doesn’t.
that’s not far at all from the truth Marko. Give a read to all those environmentalists that unabashedly claim humanity is the problem! All the billionaires and “thinkers” that claim membership in the Club of Rome and promote the IPPC
“several degrees”
Define “several”.
3?
5?
9?
For me, “a few miles” would be between about 3 and 6 or 7.
“several miles” would be from about 8 to maybe 12 or 13.
(Note the hedging of bets here.)
Sloppy writing, or just scaremongering?
George Orwell
“Sloppy writing, or just scaremongering?”
Both.
I’d say sloppy writing, or both. Some of the wording in these “papers” is really confusing. Do they even know themselves what they’re saying? Makes me wonder.
Are these people smoking colorado tabac
Coral Reefs (1997) 16, Suppl.: S39—S46 (1997)
Biology and geology of eastern Pacific coral reefs
Abstract. The tropical eastern Pacific region has histori-
cally been characterized as devoid of coral reefs. The
physical conditions of the region are apparently not con-
ducive to reef growth: low temperatures, low salinity, and
high nutrient loads. But recent work has demonstrated
persistent coral growth in some locations at relatively
high accretion rates, dating at least 5600 y before present.
Coral reefs of the eastern Pacific are typically small (a few
hectares), with discontinuous distribution and low species
diversity. On a global scale, the eastern Pacific reefs may
be considered minimum examples of coral reefs, as they
have developed in possibly one of the most restrictive
environments in the history of coral reefs. Disturbances
are frequent, bioerosion intense, and recovery seems to be
extremely slow.
The tropical eastern Pacific extends from the Sea of Cor-
tez (Gulf of California) to the northern coast of Peru´
http://studentresearch.wcp.muohio.edu/CORALREEFS/BioGeoEastpacifCorals.pdf
They proved climate change kills coral. Climate Change is real, it’s happening now, and it’s caused by capitalism. So it is written, so it shall be.
Right! Not. See several essays in ebook. Especially Shell Games.
“We are in the midst of a major environmental change that will continue to stress corals over the coming decades, so the lesson from this study is that there are these systems such as coral reefs that are sensitive to environmental change and can go through this kind of wholesale collapse in response to these environmental changes,” Cobb said.
As I have stated before, the coral may be a little tougher and these worries over their stress levels are idiotic.
From http://www.bikiniatoll.com/BIKINICORALS.pdf
In the northern atolls of the Marshall Islands, 23 nuclear tests with a total yield of 76.3 megatons (TNT equivalent) were conducted across seven test sites located either on the reef, on the sea, in the air and underwater between 1946 and 1958. Five craters were created, the deepest being the Bravo crater at 73 m depth (Noshkin et al., 1997a) (Figs. 2, 3). Post-test descriptions of environmental impacts include: surface seawater temperatures raised by 55,000 C after air-borne tests; blast waves with speeds of up to 8 m/s; and shock and surface waves up to 30 m high with blast columns reaching the floor of the lagoon (approximately 70 m depth)
The results of our 12 year long nuclear war on coral. After less than 50 years, a total of 183 scleractinian coral species were recorded, compared to 126 species recorded in the pre-bomb study.
There are more species now than then.
And from http://www.co2science.org/articles/V15/N7/EDIT.php
And in reporting the results of a study of a large brain coral that lived throughout the 17th century on the shallow seafloor off the island of Bermuda, Cohen and Madin (2007) say that although seawater temperatures at that time and location were about 1.5°C colder than it is there today, “the coral grew faster than the corals there now.”
Other studies have shown earth’s corals to be able to cope with climate-induced warmings as well as coolings. In a study of patch reefs of the Florida Keys, for example, Greenstein et al. (1998) found that Acropora cervicornis corals exhibited “long-term persistence” during both “Pleistocene and Holocene time,” the former of which periods exhibited climatic changes of large magnitude, some with significantly greater warmth than currently prevails on earth; and these climate changes had almost no effect on this long-term dominant of Caribbean coral reefs. Hence, there is good reason to not be too concerned about long-term changes in climate possibly harming earth’s corals. They apparently have the ability to handle whatever nature may throw at them in this regard.
An unofficial spokesman for the Allied Coral Species Association is thought to have stated – We have survived nuclear war, climate temperature changes of over 10 degrees, planetary magnetic shifts, giant undersea lava flows, 2,000-foot high super from Hawaii and plate tectonics for over 400 million years. We are personally more worried about you.
“There are more species now than then.”
Do they glow in the dark 🙂
No, but they sometimes eat stray fishermen.
DD More
That bore repeating with emphasis.
Well, using that information, steps to save the Great Barrier Reef are pretty clear. Nuke ’em! Eliminates the Crown of Thorn problem, disintegrates any mining cast offs and increases the bio-diversity of the coral themselves. What’s not to like! /sarc-off
Please wait until Rainbow Warrior is on location before you start saving the reef, you know to document the good that is being done. 😉