Sydney - Australia's Great Barrier Reef will lose most of its coral cover by 2050 and, at worst, the world's largest coral system could collapse by 2100 because of global warming, a study released on Saturday said.
The study by Queensland University's Centre for Marine Studies, commissioned by the Worldwide Fund for Nature, said that the destruction of coral on the Great Barrier Reef was inevitable due to global warming, regardless of what actions were taken now.
"Under the worst-case scenario, coral populations will collapse by 2100 and the re-establishment of coral reefs will be highly unlikely over the following 200-500 years," said the report entitled Implications Of Climate Change For Australia's Great Barrier Reef.
Continues Below ↓
The Great Barrier Reef is the world's largest living reef formation stretching 2 000km north to south along Australia's northeast coast.
'Corals can't adapt fast enough to match even the lower projected temperature rise' "Only if global average temperature change is kept to below two degrees Celsius can the Reef have any chance of recovering from the predicted damage," the report said.
Coral has a narrow comfort zone and is highly stressed by a temperature rise of less than 1°C.
Water temperature rises of less than 1°C coincided with the world's worst recorded coral bleaching episode in 1988. With bleaching, the warmer water forces out the algae that give coral its colour and, if all are lost, the coral dies and the reef will crumble. In 1998, 16 percent of the world's coral died, with 46 percent of the Indian Ocean coral destroyed.
Scientists project water temperatures to rise this century by between two and 6°C.
"There is little to no evidence that corals can adapt fast enough to match even the lower projected temperature rise," said the Australian report.
It said that by 2050 the Great Barrier Reef would annually experience stress levels higher than those witnessed in 1998 and, by 2100, stress levels globally for coral would be several times higher than 1998.
Continues...
|
StumbleUpon
Reddit
Digg
Delicious
Newsvine
Facebook
muti
Twitter
