An August 7th article in The New York Times (NYT) titled, Heat Raises Fears of ‘Demise’ for Great Barrier Reef Within a Generation claims recent warm ocean temperatures could be catastrophic the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) within 30 years. While there may be a kernel of truth to the temperature data, the claims of the GBR’s demise are false and ignore temperature history and the GBR’s development going back thousands of years.
The article claims:
This generation will probably see the demise of the Great Barrier Reef unless humanity acts with far more urgency to rein in climate change, according to scientists in Australia who released new research on heat in the surrounding ocean.
The Great Barrier Reef is the largest coral reef system in the world and is often called the largest living structure on Earth. The study, published on Wednesday in the journal Nature, found that recent extreme temperatures in the Coral Sea are at their highest in at least 400 years, as far back as their analysis could reach.
It included modeling that showed what has been driving those extremes: Greenhouse gas emissions caused by humans burning fossil fuels and destroying natural places that store carbon, like forests.
Claims of demise of the GBR due to climate change have been around for decades. Such claims usually invoke sea level rise (SLR), increasing temperature, or both. However, the truth of the matter is that corals thrive in warmer waters, and they deal with SLR effortlessly.
Australia’s GBR began forming in the early Holocene after 9,000 years ago, and the Holocene maximum sea level occurred around 5,000 to 6,000 years ago. The GBR’s Holocene evolution has been influenced by several factors, including sea level rise, tectonic deformation, and accretion rates.
Sea levels rose rapidly then, flooding the continental shelf by about 6–7 meters per thousand years until around 7,000 years ago. The coral kept up with the rate of SLR which is significantly faster than what is measured today. NASA satellite instruments, with readings dating back to 1993, show global sea level rising at a pace of merely 1.2 inches per decade, or 120 inches (3 meters per thousand years)
Coral evidence suggests that ocean temperatures at Heron Reef in the GBR were cooler than present around 5,200 and 7,000 years ago. However, other evidence suggests that a warm period known as the mid-Holocene Thermal Maximum occurred between 6,000 and 6,800 years ago, when the tropical ocean surface was about 1°C warmer than today. Figure1 below shows just how temperatures then compare with today.
As discussed in Climate at a Glance – Coral Reefs, coral has existed continuously for the past 60 million years, thriving amid and expanding their range in temperatures and carbon dioxide levels significantly higher than what the Earth is experiencing today, or any levels reasonably expected in the future. The primary reasons for coral bleaching events, which vary significantly depending on the time and location, include sediment and chemical pollution from nearby coastal lands, chemicals found in sunscreen (oxybenzone), fertilizer and nitrogen loading from agriculture, and cold temperature events. The argument that corals are being decimated by man-created carbon dioxide emissions is easily disproven by the available data.
Clearly corals in the GBR have survived temperatures and sea level situations far greater than what is being experienced today. The study referenced by the NYT article uses computer models to project the future of the GBR, but completely ignores the temperature and sea level history of the past.
But the final pushback against the claims of GBR demise come with the most current data. As pointed out here in Climate Realism just one month ago, despite what the media has been telling you the GBR is at its highest growth level ever, as seen in Figure 2 below.
To be clear, in recent decades, the GBR’s extent was lower, much lower, than at present when ocean temperatures were cooler, and it has grown considerably in the aftermath of bleaching events.
The worries of GBR demise don’t reflect actual data, the GBR’s history, and present experience at the reef. The threats exist only in the models, in the minds of the researchers, and the minds of the so-called journalists that push the idea. There is no evidence that climate change is worsening the health of the GBR. The resilience of the GBR serves as a reminder that nature is more adaptable and robust than we often assume. It was irresponsible for the NYT to publish this article, rife as it is with inaccuracies and misleading claims. But that seems to be par for the course in the media these days, ignoring history, context, and data to dogmatically push the climate catastrophe narrative.
Originally posted at ClimateREALISM
The GBR as presently exists will be gone when the continental shelf off the east coast of Australia is again dry land.
Or maybe not.
The corals will just gradually follow the waters they survive and thrive in, just as they have done since they first appeared in Earth’s young oceans.
Perfect example of papers and articles that prophsize doom is upon us and global warming is going to cause it. I am always reminded of the 1920’s guy with a sandwich billboard saying to repent because the world is going to end
No analysis of the subject’s ability to adapt or references to studies showing what an adequate temperature range is. Just a sense that it is going to warm and any change will cause extinction.
Parts of the Great Barrier Reef are at the southern limits for coral, so the extent should be limited by cooling, not warming.
1. Dr Bill Johnston on his Bomwatch blog shows GBR sea temperatures in an 1871 scientific survey were much the same as those measured today. Nobody has refuted this. The science cowards’way out is to ignore this research because it does not fit their beliefs.
2. The northern part of the GBR is rather warmer than the southern. The difference is far greater than that predicted by the greenhouse effect in climate change models. It is clear that corals have the ability to adapt and thrive when temperatures change through natural or greenhouse effects. Geoff S
And there are reefs around Indonesia, Philippines etc which are in even warmer waters.
There are coral reefs around Scotland, Ireland and Norway.
It’s a bit nippy in the North.
60m years old surviving the dinosaurs etc but 0.000003 degrees C rise and they’re all doomed.
There’s coral reefs at Bikini Atoll where the US conducted nuclear bomb tests.
But yeah, if the water temperature goes up a bit THAT’S gonna kill the coral. /sarc
There are also reefs in the Red Sea, with water temps up to 40 degrees C
NYT being wrong about corals is not something new.
6/21–GBR has lost half its corals (nope)
3/22–GBR hit by 6th mass bleaching (nope)
12/23–Coral reefs are in trouble from worlds hottest year (nope, nope)
8/24–Heat raises fear of demise for GBR (nope)
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If you Google “World Coral Reef Map”
It’s quite obvious that coral reefs occur in the tropics and subtropics.
Casual observation says that The New York Times is treating us to 2+2=5 propaganda.
Read The Grey Lady Winked that will tell you why you shouldn’t waste your time reading NY Times
“This generation will probably see the demise of the Great Barrier Reef unless humanity acts with far more urgency to rein in climate change…….”
“The study, published on Wednesday in the journal Nature, found that recent extreme temperatures in the Coral Sea are at their highest in at least 400 years, as far back as their analysis could reach.”
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I guess I am confused here…..I thought it was the sun that warmed the oceans. If so, why do we keep hearing that climate change is responsible for the ocean warming? More lies from the alarmists?
The ocean has warmed since the LIA? I am shocked. 😉
Thankfully!
There would be a lot of “freezing and starving in the dark” with that climate today.
“rein in climate change”
sure- no problemo- actually, to do that, we’ll have more luck all praying to God- ’cause he could do it- if he exists- otherwise, forget spending gazillions of dollars because that will have at the most, a trivial effect on the climate- however you want to define it
GBR may be warmer than it was 400 years ago during the depths of the LIA,
That is a good thing !!
But it is nowhere near as warm as it was during the MWP and the centuries before 1500AD.
And the GBR grew and flourished.
I rather like this chart by Rosenthal, showing sea temps in the Makassar Straits (Indonesia region), so not that far from the GBR.
(Andy May might have put in the historical event comment boxes)
From the abstract of the Henley et al paper :
I’m probably wrong, as is so often the case, but isn’t this a variant of “p-hacking / data dredging” ?
The “Great Barrier Reef (National Park)” is a small fraction of the “Coral Sea”. Panels b and d of their Figure 2 are (hopefully, it’s a large image file) attached below, panel d gives an idea of just how “small” that fraction is.
Panel b, on the other hand, shows the “5-year averages” for the GBR returning to the ~1720 peak in the “Central inner shelf … aligned with obs.” reconstruction (the orange line), following a slow decline up to 1910-1930.
.
They keep using the phrase “supporting evidence”.
It does not mean what they seem to think it means.
[ Edit : I got a “429 Too Many Requests” error the first time I clicked on the “Post Comment” button, possibly due to large consecutive image file sizes (~325KB + ~100KB). A duplicate may end up appearing later … ]
I also found the following in the Supplementary Information file (26 MB in size !) for Henley et al.
It actually outlines the GBR giving a better idea of just how “small” a fraction of the Coral Sea we are talking about.
They appear to have used the ERSST (V5) SST reconstruction dataset, which only has 2°x2° resolution, providing just 7 grid-cells that cover the GBR.
A few years ago I looked at the HadISST (V1) reconstruction, which with 1°x1° resolution has (on the order of) 36 grid-cells covering the GBR.
NB : See the image file attached to the end of this comment at WUWT about a month ago to better appreciate the difference that change in resolution makes.
Updating that spreadsheet to 2024, and isolating the “January-March” averages that Henley et al are getting all worked up about may take some time … but at first glance, at least, it counts as something that I would qualify as “interesting” to investigate anyway.
The graph from Rosenthal, actually concurs the 400 year warming, starting at the depths of the LIA.
But it is obvious that Ben H hasn’t done a proper lit-review, otherwise he would know that the oceans in the area were much warmer than now before the LIA.
Or maybe he does know about the Rosenthal work, and has deliberately ignored tat fact. ??
Which do others think…. incompetent lit-review… or deliberate deceit?
C. All of the above.
Note to the WUWT website operators : Apologies for using your server disk space as a “dumping ground” for my idle musings, especially as most of the conclusions are in the “Cannot be determined” category.
A comparison between the (2-degree resolution) ERSST (V5) and the (1-degree resolution) HadISST (V1) datasets for the GBR grid-cells is attached below.
NB : These are “straight averages” of the grid-cell SST anomalies (Reference Period = 1961-1990). I calculated both the “latitude weighted” and “fraction of grid-cell that is ocean within the GBR Marine Park weighted” versions of the “GBR average SST anomalies” but the lines basically overlapped.
As each grid-cell has a winter-to-summer and summer-to-winter (6-month) delta of at least 3°C (and up to 9°C) … every single year since 1854 / 1870 … it is unclear what all of the “alarm / panic” about anomalies bouncing around in a range of 2°C over 125 years comes from.
NB : I can only attach one image file from my local hard disk per WUWT post.
My attempt to reproduce panel f of Henley et al‘s Figure 1 …
A screenshot of the actual “Figure 1, panel f” from Henley et al.
They “obviously” just did a straight average of the BoM’s 7 ERSST5 grid-cells that “cover” the GBR.
For reference, a plot I generated (3 years ago) showing how the GBR “overlaps” the 2-degree (ERSST) and 1-degree (HadISST) grid-lines, as well as where the Australian landmass falls (cf Figure S1 in Henley et al‘s “Supplementary Information” file, a screenshot of which is attached to the end of the post this is a “Reply” to).
A brick in the wall of “Eat, Sleep, Walk, Talk, Breed, and Think Our Way or We’re All Going To Die.” — And stop doing that or you’ll go blind.
A proposal to save the Planet from Climate Change.
Instead of dumping NaOH into the ocean off Martha’s Vineyard, dump it on The Great Barrier Reef.
Then they wouldn’t care if all dies! /s
The Earth is still in a 2.5 million-year long-term ice age named the Quaternary Glaciation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternary_glaciation
Corals were around when it was much warmer than the present, before this long-term ice age even started