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By Natalie Venegas
Weekend Reporter
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A study published on Wednesday revealed that the Great Barrier Reef experienced its highest ocean temperatures in 400 years over the past decade, raising alarms about its future survival amid ongoing global warming.
Australia's Great Barrier Reef is highly important to the ecosystem and the local economy, but it is under threat from bleaching. Bleaching occurs when corals turn white as a result of environmental pressures. In this state, the corals become highly vulnerable, meaning they are more likely to die. And when they die, they rarely grow back. Bleaching is mainly caused by higher than usual temperatures, which scientists say are increasing due to climate change.
In a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature, scientists from Melbourne University and other Australian institutions noted that during five significant bleaching years in the past decade, temperatures were significantly higher than any recorded since 1618.
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Researchers used climate models to attribute the warming rate after 1900 to human-caused climate change, the Associated Press (AP) reported.
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"The reef is in danger, and without significant action, our generation may witness the loss of one of the world's greatest natural wonders," Benjamin Henley, the study's lead author and lecturer of sustainable urban management at the University of Melbourne, told the AP. "If you put all of the evidence together, the coral biology and reef ecology tell us that the heat extremes are occurring too often for those corals to effectively adapt and evolve."
Newsweek reached out to Henley via email on Wednesday for further comment.
According to the AP, scientists involved in the study reconstructed sea surface temperatures from 1618 to 1995 using coral skeleton samples from the Coral Sea. They combined this data with more recent sea surface temperatures from 1900 to 2024 as the findings showed relatively stable temperatures before 1900 and steady warming from January to March from 1960 to 2024.
While coral reefs are crucial for seafood production and tourism worldwide, scientists have long warned that additional coral loss is likely due to global temperatures approaching the 1.5 degrees Celsius threshold countries agreed to in the 2015 Paris climate agreement as an effort to keep warming under control. Even if it is kept under that mark, 70 percent to 90 percent of global corals could still be at risk, scientists have said, leading to a significant reduction in coral diversity, the AP reported.
The new study comes after an April study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal in which researchers from the universities of Exeter, U.K., and Queensland found that if climate change continues, deeper parts of the threatened Great Barrier Reef that are protected against climate change will be lost.
"The Great Barrier Reef has been experiencing recurrent widespread mass coral bleaching events, with one of the largest mortality events occurring as we speak. Therefore, this situation is extremely worrying," Jennifer McWhorter, who led the research during a QUEX PhD studentship at the universities of Exeter and Queensland, told Newsweek for a previous story.
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