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.”
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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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They like that word “collapse”. Maybe “climate collapse” will be the next transmogrification. Sounds so ominous.
Richard Betts @richardabetts
‘Burst of warming may end lull in rising temperatures’
(via tallbloke’s)
‘Burst of warming may end lull in rising temperatures’
There is a chance of this happening and possibly right now. Here’s one of the important things to look for.
The Pacific ocean stores more heat than any ocean and has cycles, the most important one measured with the PDO index. When the PDO is negative, we have more cooling La Nina’s and I suspect heat probably gets stored in the Pacific. We saw global cooling from the 1950’s-70’s with a -PDO regime. This was around 30 years.
When it flips to positive, just the opposite happens. We have more El Nino’s, heat comes out and it causes a global warming influence. We had a +PDO from the late 70’s to late 90’s, culminating with the great El Nino of 1998, which is when the PDO flipped back to negative. This particular +PDO regime was shorter, only lasting a bit over 20 years.
From 1998 to the start of 2014, we have been in a -PDO regime, with more La Ninas, a natural global cooling influence. This offset the greenhouse gas warming effect from increasing CO2 in my opinion and could have been more responsible for the hiatus than any other factor.
That period above with the most recent -PDO was only 16 years. In the past, it appears as if many PDO regimes would last ~30 years, so this would be much shorter than that. If this did mark the end, there are several important things that may be going on.
We have had a positive PDO for over a year now, with the last 2 months having the highest readings yet:
If we have started the next +PDO regime, it means that natural global warming from heat coming out of the Pacific has commenced. If the last -PDO regime was in fact only 16 years, it could mean that the periodicity of the PDO index/cycle varies by much more than we thought(much shorter) or it could even mean that stored heat that used to take 30 years to come out, is doing so faster because of warmer oceans that have changed things a bit.
There is another possibility also. In the middle of the previous -PDO regime, during the late 1950’s, especially 1957/8, the PDO suddenly went positive. This was temporary as we backed down into negative territory, going the 1960’s, thru the mid 1970’s with a persistently -PDO.
Are we repeating the spike higher to a strongly +PDO here at around the halfway point of this -PDO regime in similar fashion to the previous -PDO or has the -PDO ended after only 16 years?
This is very important. While I believe that there is a continuous slight warming of the atmosphere from increasing CO2, the reason for the global cooling(50’s-70’s) accelerating global warming(80’s-90’s) then flat trend has a great deal to do with the sign of the PDO index.
It signals whether we will have more heat coming out of the Pacific or more heat going in on a decade(s) long time scale. This is more than speculation.
http://www.nc-climate.ncsu.edu/climate/patterns/PDO.html
Looking at just the currently strong +PDO, one might lean strongly towards us entering the new +PDO regime. However, a couple of things make me suspicious. The atmospheric pattern, with the Ridiculously Resilient Ridge out west and Polar Vortex/cut off type lows in the East are more of a -PDO type pattern.
Also, a year ago, we had the makings of a what was supposed to be a massive El Nino for later in 2014.. Under a +PDO that should have happened. It’s a -PDO regime that tends to weaken El Nino’s like this one did. Maybe this is temporary excursion into +PDO territory like we witnessed in the late 1950’s.
Watch the PDO and signals coming from the Pacific ocean over the next 2 years. They should teach us a few things.
You can see the PDO index monthly values here:
http://margaret.atmos.washington.edu/pdo/PDO.latest
Great PDO essay, Mr. Maguire (a bona fide meteorologist)! Thanks for sharing.
Your repeatedly asserted “belief” in the effect of human CO2 is deplorable, however… . Faith must work with REASON and evidence. Where there is ONLY speculation and conjecture (as with AGW), to “believe” is foolish.
“Your repeatedly asserted “belief” in the effect of human CO2 is deplorable, however… . Faith must work with REASON and evidence. Where there is ONLY speculation and conjecture (as with AGW), to “believe” is foolish”
Janice,
YW for the PDO stuff. On the belief that increasing CO2 from humans causes warming, we have loads of evidence from the known laws of physics as powerful evidence. To me, it’s not IF increasing CO2 has caused some warming but HOW MUCH.
We know that the planet has warmed up close to 1 degree C since the Industrial Revolution……….indisputable. CO2 levels have gone up from 280ppm to 400ppm.
Some items that prevent me from assuming that all the warming came from CO2 is the fact that we warmed naturally like this before during the Roman Warm Period and the Medieval Warm Period as well as many times in the past. We were already warming naturally, coming out of the Little Ice Age.
The fact that we can have stretches of natural cooling like the 1950′-70’s and lack of warming the last 2 decades shows that natural decades long cycles are very powerful and probably accounted for around half of the warming in the 80’s/90’s.
Also the effect of increasing CO2 is logarithmic……….the more and more you add, the less and less the effect.
Also, I observe negative feedbacks to the increase in CO2, warming and water vapor from increasing evapotranspiration, increase low clouds and decreasing cloud height.
Also, I will only mention the sun in the speculative category at this time but a more active sun in the last warming century and less active sun(sunspots) during the Little Ice Age is likely to be more than coincidence(I’m open minded to the Cosmic ray theory).
Could all the natural factors explain all the warming, with CO2 being responsible for none of it?
In order to believe this, you have to deny the laws of physics. I think sometimes, some of us focus to much on the “other sides” exaggeration and distorted interpretation(which is clearly happening) that we forget that there is an underlying fundamental principle that defines the basic assumption of their position.
CO2 is a greenhouse gas.
I think that most of the warming has been beneficial and know with absolute certainty that the increase in CO2 has been greatly beneficial to most life on this planet as seen by the booming biosphere and greening.
Thanks for that. PDO suddenly reversed in 1963 from its natural cycle course, It took up a decade to recover;.look up ‘asteroidea’ experiment.
Mike Maguire: “we have loads of evidence from the known laws of physics ”
{Essex has a quote for you on that exact line at 48:00 on the below video, heh}
You need to investigate that claim further, with your fine research skills. So far… there is NO EVIDENCE AT ALL that CO2 drives climate shifts.
Chris Essex presents the actually state of the physics concisely and clearly here {WATCH THE ENTIRE VIDEO — I did and it is well worth it}:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/02/20/believing-in-six-impossible-things-before-breakfast-and-climate-models/
Dr. Christopher Essex,
Chairman, Permanent Monitoring Panel on Climate, World Federation of Scientists, and Professor and Associate Chair, Department of Applied Mathematics, University of Western Ontario (Canada) in London, 12 February 2015
{video linked in above WUWT article and also here on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19q1i-wAUpY}
7 Key “Impossible Things” Points (listed at ~ 1:07:06 in the video} in Video with approx. times:
{25:17} 1. Solving the closure problem. {i.e., the “basic physic” equations have not even been SOLVED yet, e.g., the flow of fluids equation “Navier-Stokes Equations” — we still can’t even figure out what the flow of water in a PIPE would be if there were any turbulence}
{30:20} 2. a. Computers with infinite representation. {gross overestimation and far, far, misplaced confidence in the ability of computers to do math accurately (esp. over many iterations) — in this section he discuss the 100 km square gaps {specifically mentioned at about 46:00} (i.e., cell size) — e.g., to analyze air movement, the cell would need to be, per Komogorov microscale, 1mm (aersols even smaller, microns)) — in climate data,
at about 44:00 His discusses the fact that even IF the basic equations were known, there isn’t enough time since time began to calculate even just a TEN – year forecast, even at super-fast speeds it would take approx. 10 to the 20th power years (the universe is only 10 to the 10th power years old)}
2. b. Computer water and cultural physics {also in Intro through ~14:50}.
{19:40} 3. Greenhouses that don’t work by the greenhouse effect.
{14:50} 4. Carbon-free sugar.
{15:40} 5. Oxygen-free carbon dioxide.
{passim} 6. Nonexistent long-term natural variability.
{49:00} 7. Nonempirical climate models that conserve what they are supposed to conserve {that is, they do not do this}.
**********************************************************
Further, Dr. Murry Salby and others have good evidence from ice core proxies that strongly indicates that temperature drives CO2 emissions, not the other way around.
Dr. Salby, Hamburg lecture, April, 2013 (youtube)
Another video worth WATCHING IN ITS ENTIRETY.
*****************************************************
And to end on a happy note:
Yes, we do agree on this: CO2 is good for plants (and, thus, humans)!
Best wishes to you in your continuing search for the facts!
Janice
i’m still trying to wrap my head around a “wet” La Nina…
but i guess it has to rain somewhere, even when it’s not raining here in #Failifornia.
Just a few years ago, a hard freeze hit Florida and resulted in lots of bleached coral.
Like the State Department’s #2, Marie Harf, said about stopping terrorism with jobs, maybe there’s some nuance were not getting about cold and hot causing the same result.
She works for the State Department?????? Caught just part of that clip and thought it was somebody doing Lily Tomlin’s “Susie Sorority” skit. Silly me.
lol
Lily Tomlin “Suzie Sorority” (youtube)
How many seconds can YOU stand to listen… ?
Why did I post that? Because she has it coming. She is a disgrace.
The libs/AGWers put women up on stage to say their l1es and or inanities because people still think women are in general more trustworthy (eye roll).
It’s YET ANOTHER UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCE FAIL FOR THE libs, however. What the Envirostalinists/Enviroprofiteers/Libs gain for their message in pseudo-credibility will be COMPLETELY OFFSET by the annoyance factor: *CLICK!* channel changed.
Heh.
Janice:
Only trustworthy if the women prevent the male mental facilities from engaging and leave the guys just nodding.
They describe the marine coral environment as “very wet”. I have snorkeled on reefs all along the central and eastern Caribbean and this is consistent with what I have observed. So I would tentatively say they might be correct on this one point.
True. Corals don´t thrive in a dry environment.
Reblogged this on Public Secrets and commented:
From the article: ““It’s possible that anthropogenic climate change may once again be pushing these reefs towards another regional collapse.”
So a coral reef shutdown four thousand, one hundred years ago is a warning of the dangers from the Demon CO2 today, even though a) there was no anthropogenically generated CO2 back then and b) this all seems tied to la nina/el nino cycles? Check. (Note the weasel words “possible” and “may.”)
Egad, to do a study that shows cold kills the corals and then state that the continuing(?) warmiing will do the same with out any evidence is…is…surely even illegal isn’t it? Shameful. Maybe they just added this non sequitur in to divert us from sceptical analysis of their actual idea re cold killing coral. I guess they didn’t think back to how much colder it was 18,000yrs ago or how much wamer it was in the previous interglacial (Eemian). S’truth and zounds they took an interesting study and made it into a piece of crap with one paragraph.
Coral survived well during the glacial periods in which we spend most of our time! Interglacials are just a brief summer break. Do they mention how deep the water is over this reef? Maybe it drowned in a period of localized rapid sea level rise from faulting or got dusted up and poisoned by volcanoes?. An extraordinary theory needs extraordinary evidence and a look at all the factors is de rigueur. I would ask them if they investigated further away north and south…Where does this de-education of today’s students end?
Coral growth was shut down for 2500 years, according to this study.
And then resumed.
Corals are capable of dealing with changing climates and changing pH. That is why they have survived over 100 million years. They may not survive in the exact same place, some will shift locations between ice ages and interglacials, just as fish will move north or south depending on whether you are in an ice ago or an interglacial (or in warmer or colder phases of either).
Agree, I’ll put my money on the evolutionary survivor.
I hope there is an in depth analysis of how coral can grow at different depths. Since, the oceans were rising at a rate approx. 10 meters over 4.5K BP to 3.5BP or 10mm a year. Hence, some of these corals, I suspect could have been pushed to too great of a depth to grow and hence just stagnated until other factors allowed for a resurgence.
I believe that right around this same period of time is when we started to see a rapid drying out in the Levant and the level of the Dead Sea began to fall rapidly.
Some corals live deep beneath the waves (in an an octopus’s garden in the shade). The most common example, Lophelia pertusa, has a mysterious affinity for hydrocarbons. That makes it a fair target for Greenpeace:
=========
In recent years, environmental organizations such as Greenpeace have argued that exploration for oil on the north west continental shelf slopes of Europe should be curtailed due to the possibility that is it damaging to the Lophelia reefs – conversely, Lophelia has recently been observed growing on the legs of oil installations, specifically the Brent Spar rig which Greenpeace campaigned to remove.
Greenpeace’s campaign to remove the Brent Spar meant that in effect Greenpeace destroyed a rare species. [!]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lophelia
=============
This 70 year old coral reef began life as an oil tanker:
Ya gotta love the weasel words:
e.g. Those mystical geochemical signals that are consistent… Consistent? Is that new age climate speak for proven proxies?
Or that “…very cool and very wet…” periods. Wet? I thought salt water is wet? Were the somnolent corals dry?
Another example: “…with very strong upwelling…”; I suppose there is a proxy for that? Ocean litter and detritus in the coral layers? Are not corals just stationary filter feeders that feast on organic detritus?
“…In Pacific Panamá, … Due to limited data at the site,…”
Say, isn’t that another way of telling us the researchers love their vacation work site choice and want to go back frequently?
Reckon that we have to wait till the paper officially comes out with all details, data, methods and code.
To summarise:
“4000 years ago cooling caused by upwelling devastated the Panamanian coral reefs. Therefore global warming could devastate the Panamanian coral reefs.”
Jack-ass science, a Dick- house publication.
Recent PBS program, infrared light on coral shows they adapt to the bright hotter sun, acting as a sunscreen, they are not bleaching.
The bumphead parrotfish eat the coral and act as fertilizer with waste to feed more coral,
smaler fisg eat the alage from the coral.
This is certainly a bizarre contortion, considering the reality of the climate in Panama and the Eastern Pacific, which we peer at on a daily basis. Obviously these “scientists” didn’t bother to learn anything about the weather in this area before they made their pronouncements.
The upwelling, at least near-shore, is driven by winds coming across the Panama Divide from the Caribbean during the “dry” season, from December to about April. Temperature is not a factor, wind speed is. More wind, more cool water upwelled from the deep. Any rain falls mostly on the Caribbean side of the mountains.
During the “wet” season, from May to November, the ITCZ shifts north a bit and the near-shore winds stop. Huge thunderstorms form in the Pacific and drift onshore into Panama. This is when the el Niño will come if it is going to.
Given that thunderstorms (the source of ALL the rain here) are creatures of heat, it’s hard to see how cooler will ever equal wetter. Unless they were talking about the ocean, in which case, wetter means???
Total blather.
Odd that they didn’t point out the 4200 Kiloyear Event. A well known sudden cooling of the world.
Even the wiki knows about it (queue alarmist revisionists to get their erasers out…)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4.2_kiloyear_event
Though I note that where it used to say it was a cold spike it now says “aridification” event… but it was cold, and it is dry when it is cold…
If you look on this graph from that link you will find a deep cold spike at about 4200 YA.
It is cold that kills. BTW, that is ONE of the Bond Events that periodically happen. They are preceded by a warm spike. They happen roughly every 1470 years on average, and the last one was at the start of the Dark Ages in about 536 AD. Now lets see… 1470+536 = 2006…. One hopes this is one of the ‘closer to 1800 year’ odd cases and the snows in New England are not going to stay for a few hundred years…
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2013/04/28/egyptian-dark-ages/
Lost an Egyptian Empire, the Akkadian Empire, and a few other empires in that 4200 ybp / ya cycle.
then quoting from one of the referenced papers:
So it’s pretty well known that a very cold very dry event happened 4200 years ago (more or less) and had global disaster consequences. What I find of interest in this coral study is that talks to mechanism (shifts of ocean currents / patterns) and shows evidence for a global cold turn.
Watch for ‘extreme drought’ in Egypt to the Levant as this present sleepy sun cold turn continues to unfold. Oh, and as a bit of evidence that it is far colder now than in the past, this quote:
So rainfall, that drops off when things are cold and increases when things are hot, has been wobbling downward consistently for several thousand years. (Part of why we now find large Egyptian ruins of cities and more in dead sandy deserts today. They were thriving then…). So “now” we are a good 10 m lower at full flood. That’s a heck of a lot less water, and a heck of a lot more cold. Were we warmer we’d have more flood on the Nile, not less. And we are poised for a much deeper cold plunge this time as we continue the downward drift into the next Ice Age Glacial.