• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

World’s 4th Global Coral Bleaching Event Confirmed – And It Could Be The Worst Yet

April 16, 2024 by Deborah Bloomfield

We are currently experiencing a global coral bleaching event – the fourth such event on record and the second in the last decade – the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced Monday (April 15).

“From February 2023 to April 2024, significant coral bleaching has been documented in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres of each major ocean basin,” NOAA’s Dr Derek Manzello said in a statement released by the agency.

Advertisement

In that time, mass bleaching has been confirmed throughout the tropics, affecting coral from Florida and the Caribbean to Brazil, the Red Sea, and Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. 

After months of record-breaking heat across the globe, it’s no surprise the spike in temperature is taking its toll on coral, which is very sensitive to heat stress.

“As the world’s oceans continue to warm, coral bleaching is becoming more frequent and severe,” Manzello added. “When these events are sufficiently severe or prolonged, they can cause coral mortality, which hurts the people who depend on the coral reefs for their livelihoods.”

Bleaching happens when corals become stressed by changes in their environment, such as warming waters, and expel the symbiotic algae that live in their tissues, causing them to turn completely white. It can also occur in response to changes in light or nutrients, or if water becomes too cold. 

Boulder star coral in Caribbean healthy, bleached, and recovered

A boulder star coral in St. Croix in the Caribbean as it shifted from healthy (May 2023), to bleached (October 2023), to recovered (March 2024).

Image credit: NOAA

NOAA’s Coral Reef Watch has been monitoring bleaching-level heat stress since 1985, using sea surface temperature data from satellite measurements. The current global bleaching event is the fourth on record: the first was in 1998, followed by events in 2010 and 2014-17 – each of which was worse than the last.

According to Manzello, more than 54 percent of the world’s coral area has experienced bleaching-level heat stress in the past year, and this appears to be increasing by around 1 percent a week, he told the New York Times.

Within a couple of weeks, “this event is likely to be the most spatially extensive global bleaching event on record,” Manzello predicted.

Though bleaching doesn’t kill the coral, it does leave it exposed to disease and at greater risk of dying off. This is bad news for corals and the ecosystems they support, but also impacts the communities relying on them, and can be detrimental to economies, livelihoods, and food security, among other things.

Advertisement

Thankfully, coral can recover if the stress driving the bleaching is removed. Efforts are already being made, by the likes of the NOAA, to help restore the world’s coral reefs. In Florida – which experienced an unprecedented heatwave last year – for example, they are attempting to move coral nurseries to deeper, cooler waters and use sunshades to protect corals in other areas.

But in light of the latest announcement, it’s clear even more needs to be done across the world to protect this vital ecosystem from further bleaching.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Factbox-Top announcements from Apple event
  2. Some Evergrande bondholders not paid coupon by end of Wed deadline NY time-sources
  3. New Animals Discovered In Rock Art Of Famous Prehistoric Cave
  4. Winter-Proof Lithium-Ion Battery Works At Minus 80 Degrees

Source Link: World’s 4th Global Coral Bleaching Event Confirmed – And It Could Be The Worst Yet

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • Hui Te Rangiora: Old Māori Legend Suggests They May Have Discovered Antarctica 1,000 Years Before Europeans
  • “Potential Impact On Saturn”: Astronomers Appeal For Help As Video Appears To Show Object Hitting The Gas Giant
  • What Is Prosopometamorphopsia? The “Exceedingly Rare” Condition That Made A Patient See Faces As Dragons
  • Are We In An Enormous Void? It Could Explain What’s Wrong With Our Model Of The Universe
  • Woylies Boing Back Into Western Australia Thanks To Groundbreaking Wildlife Project
  • North America’s Oldest Pterosaur And Turtle Fossils Found In Arizona’s Petrified Forest
  • Proposed “Dark Dwarfs” Near The Galactic Center Could Reveal The Nature Of Dark Matter
  • Watch: 18-Kilometer-High Ash Cloud Looms Over Indonesia’s Mount Lewotobi Laki Laki After “Explosive” Eruption
  • “ShipGoo001”: Mystery Of Entirely New Lifeform Discovered Coating A Great Lakes Ship
  • Rare White Humpback Whale Calf Filmed By Drone Off Australia’s East Coast
  • Who Was Buried At Cave Of Salome: A Female Disciple, Jesus’ Midwife, Or A Princess?
  • “Hidden” Changes To US Health Data Swapping “Gender” For “Sex” Spark Fears For Public Trust
  • Easter Island Was Never As Isolated As We Thought – Study Puts That “Strange Argument” To Bed
  • If Birds Are Dinosaurs, Why Are None As Big As T. Rexes?
  • Psychologists Demonstrate Illusion That Could Be Screwing Up Our Perception Of Time
  • Why Are So Many Enormous Roman Shoes Being Discovered At Hadrian’s Wall?
  • Scientists Think They’ve Pinpointed Structural Differences In Psychopaths’ Brains
  • We’ve Found Our Third-Ever Interstellar Visitor, Orcas Filmed Kissing (With Tongues) In The Wild, And Much More This Week
  • The “Eyes Of Clavius” Will Be Visible On The Moon Today, Thanks To Clair-Obscur Effect
  • Shockingly High Microplastic Levels Found On Remote Mediterranean Coral Reef Island
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version