Australian scientists from the University of Queensland believe corals around the world are at risk of heavy loss due to heatwaves in the next one to two years. The study was published in the scientific journal magazine Science.
“We were shocked to learn that heat stress conditions began as much as 12 weeks earlier than previously recorded peaks and persisted much longer across much of the eastern tropical Pacific and Caribbean.
Historical data suggest that current marine heatwaves could be a precursor to global mass bleaching and coral loss over the next 12 to 24 months as the El Niño phase continues,” said the study’s lead author, Professor Uwe Hoeg-Guldberg.
According to the scientist, the current climate situation puts not only corals but also a quarter of the total diversity of life in the oceans at serious risk of extinction. In addition to temperature, coral reefs are also negatively affected by increasing acidity and pollution of sea water.
Experiments to introduce thermotolerance genes into natural coral populations have shown promising results, but these operations are difficult to carry out at the required scale due to logistics, the researcher added.
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