Guest essay by Eric Worrall
New Scientist has discovered that bleaching is a mechanism by which coral protects itself from abrupt warming (or cooling). But if global warming hits 2C, somehow all the coral will know it is time to die.
Corals swap in heat-resistant algae to better cope with global warming
ENVIRONMENT 17 May 2021
By Karina Shah
Some corals can swap out the algae that live inside their tissues for different strains that are more heat tolerant – and these coral species have a better chance of surviving global climate change in the coming decades.
When sea temperatures are too high, corals expel the microscopic algae living in their tissues. This is what occurs during coral bleaching. Losing algae in this way is harmful for the corals because the algae normally provide oxygen for them and remove their waste products. However, marine biologists have previously discovered that when some corals are exposed to warmer temperatures, they can swap the algae inside their tissues for strains that have a higher thermal tolerance.
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The researchers found that the coral species that are able to swap their algae for more heat-resistant strains are more likely to survive until 2100 by resisting bleaching. But this was only the case in scenarios in which greenhouse gas emissions are kept low and ocean warming is restricted to below 2°C.
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Read more: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2277726-corals-swap-in-heat-resistant-algae-to-better-cope-with-global-warming/
The abstract of the study;
Quantifying global potential for coral evolutionary response to climate change
Cheryl A. Logan, John P. Dunne, James S. Ryan, Marissa L. Baskett & Simon D. Donner
Abstract
Incorporating species’ ability to adaptively respond to climate change is critical for robustly predicting persistence. One such example could be the adaptive role of algal symbionts in setting coral thermal tolerance under global warming and ocean acidification. Using a global ecological and evolutionary model of competing branching and mounding coral morphotypes, we show symbiont shuffling (towards taxa with increased heat tolerance) was more effective than symbiont evolution in delaying coral-cover declines, but stronger warming rates (high emissions scenarios) outpace the ability of these adaptive processes and limit coral persistence. Acidification has a small impact on reef degradation rates relative to warming. Global patterns in coral reef vulnerability to climate are sensitive to the interaction of warming rate and adaptive capacity and cannot be predicted by either factor alone. Overall, our results show how models of spatially resolved adaptive mechanisms can inform conservation decisions.
Read more: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-021-01037-2
One thing I’m curious about, how do all the corals know its time to die, when average global temperature reaches 2C above pre-industrial? With large contiguous reefs like the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, there is a substantial difference between the average sea temperature of the cool southern end of the reef, and water temperatures in the tropical far North. Yet somehow a death signal manages to propagate across all these hugely varied biomes, like a kind of coral telepathy.
Do I need the /sarc tag?
But haven’t the oceans warmed by 2C since 1900? https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indicators-sea-surface-temperature
So all those reefs should be dead?
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And masks work, but only if you’re in a big box store where a thousand or so people go through every day. Masks don’t work in mom & pops stores, where maybe 50 or so people come through the doors each day.
Funny how that works, innit?
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“Keep it below 2C or the coral gets it.”
because the algae normally provide oxygen for them
Can someone explain this please? the algae somehow process and concentrate the oxygen dissolved in seawater, which surrounds the coral anyhow, and what? fart it at the coral?
“someone explain this”
That’s the deal. No one can. It is all nonsense.
This says it “this was only the case in scenarios in which greenhouse gas emissions are kept low and ocean warming is restricted to below 2°C.”
They are talking about 2C of ocean warming. It has taken 100 years (plus some data adjustments) for the air to warm by 1C. Water needs about 4000x more energy to raise the temperature of 1kg by 1 degree. So before our ocean’s temperature has gone up by 2C, we need to wait several centuries. 🙂
So, the obvious.
Let me explain, if the temperature changes, the corals let the algae evolve as the polyps are more resistant than the algae.
If it heats more than it’s predicted to heat up (upper bound) in a hundred years, the coral will be pushed to evolve.
Who’d know, it’s almost like this happened time and again in the archeological record.
2 degrees. From where? From now or rom the current (SCIENTIFIC) guesstimate made for 1740? And why? Explain your answer.
I used to have a subscription to New Scientist. It’s Woke, Globalist anti-industry and Global Warming focus has turned it into a complete rag. wherein all scientific intimations are referenced against a list of politically acceptable topics and opinions before being published. It’s laughable now. Corals in the Red Sea are doing fine and thanks to the courage of Peter Ridd we now know that the Great Barrier reef suffers more from agricultural run-off than from any warming, which itself is a result of normal el Nino weather patterns. But, the lies continue ever more desperately as the world refuses to obey their simplistic hypothesis.