Once, El Nino Was Needed For Mass Coral Bleaching; Normal Ocean Temps Now Enough

[hatrack]

EDIT

What causes coral bleaching?
It happens when the sea temperature reaches roughly a degree warmer than the long-term summer maximum and stays there for four to six weeks. Corals can survive it, but if the event goes on longer, or the temperature climbs higher still, you get mass mortality. Over the last 12 months seas have come very close to that threshold. We're on the brink of a major, worldwide bleaching event, says the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Coral Reef Watch programme.

Are these events becoming more common?
Once, it might have taken the extra ocean warming of an El Niño to cause bleaching, but we're now getting to the point where even regular temperatures are getting high enough. When we predicted this in 1999, I became a pariah. People were saying "No, that's not possible." But it's coming true – no one's been able to knock that idea off. And I think that 20 years from now, every summer will be too hot for corals: they will disappear as dominant members of tropical reef systems by 2040-2050. It's hard to argue it any other way.

How can we peer beyond that bleak outlook?
Lots of people say to me, "God, you're a depressing bastard." But this is the scientific reality. What we're hoping as we head towards this year's climate summit in Paris is that we can bring this startling issue to the fore. The CSS now has a rapid-response capacity; we can quickly send people and recording equipment to bear witness to the actual moments of bleaching. The death throes of coral are, sadly, quite beautiful events.

Where is the beauty in dying coral?
It happens over a week, but there comes a moment when suddenly reefs just go from being brown – from all those symbiotic algae inside their tissues – to these beautiful white translucent colours, when the algae are expelled. Pink and purple animal pigments in the coral produce beautiful fluorescing patterns. On the southern Great Barrier Reef we had some localised bleaching, and dive companies were encouraging people to come to see the fluorescing corals. I understand why they did it, but it was bizarre – like partying at a funeral.

EDIT

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22630160.300-soon-every-summer-will-be-too-hot-for-corals.html?cmpid=RSS|NSNS|2012-GLOBAL|climate-change#.VSmy1pPth3M

[Nihil]

1. I think we will be seeing much more of this sort of thing: "like partying at a funeral"

We're already seeing scum celebrate when they slaughter rare creatures for "sport"
and more scum spending their excessive wealth on obscene "delicacies".

Now, people are cashing in on seeing the death throes of coral FFS ...