CORAL CATASTROPHE: Unusually warm waters in the Caribbean killed more than 40 percent of corals in some places there--a catastrophe that may be repeated this year.
Image: Photo by Lauretta Burke, courtesy WikiMedia Commons
Unusually warm ocean temperatures in the summer and fall of 2005 caused a mass die-off of Caribbean corals that is the worst ever recorded there, according to new research published yesterday in the online journal PLoS ONE.
More than 80 percent of corals bleached and over 40 percent died at many sites in the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico that year, the study says, arguing the 2005 event will have long-term consequences for the health of reefs.
Such events are also likely to become more common as global warming continues, concludes a team of 65 authors in 22 countries. They predict "a troubled future for tropical marine ecosystems under a warming climate."
Lead author Mark Eakin, who coordinates the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Coral Reef Watch, said the new paper presents the "first time there's been a full analysis of what happened across the Caribbean in 2005."
It also draws a link between the events of 2005 and an overall rise in the temperature of the world's oceans.
"We'd seen all these bleaching events in the Caribbean and we thought we knew what thermal stress would look like," Eakin said of the aftermath of the 2005 bleaching event. "But this was just hideous in its scope, it was so big."
The heat stress on corals during the 2005 event was greater than any recorded by scientists in two decades prior and the average temperatures in the region were the warmest in more than 150 years, the study says.
Warming temperatures 'starving' the corals
The analysis notes that, for the first time, scientists recorded bleaching at Saba, an island in the Netherlands Antilles, mass bleaching in the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary in the Gulf of Mexico, and bleaching of elkhorn coral -- a threatened species -- in the Virgin Islands National Park.
Bleaching occurs when corals expel the microscopic algae that normally live inside their hard skeletons, providing them with food and their bright coloration. Changes in ocean salinity, nutrient runoff and other pollution can cause small-scale bleaching, but scientists say that large-scale bleaching like the 2005 Caribbean event is a symptom of unusual ocean warmth.
Such bleaching doesn't always spell death for corals, but those that survive are often weaker and more susceptible to disease.
"A bleached coral is still alive," Eakin said. "If the bleaching event is mild enough in the short term, they can recover their algae. But they're starving at the point they lose their algae."
An example of that sort of recovery occurred off the Florida Keys during the 2005 bleaching event. A string of hurricanes -- Katrina, Rita and Wilma among them -- that came through the area helped cool down water temperatures. Although the storms were relatively weak when they passed by the Keys, the wind, rain and clouds they brought were enough to halt bleaching there.
But long-term prospects for coral appear to be grim, the study notes, since reefs recover slowly from large-scale bleaching events, and those events are becoming more frequent. Major bleaching is now occurring in the Caribbean "every five years or less," the study says.
That includes a bleaching event that has rippled around the globe this year, affecting reefs in Kuwait, the Maldives, Southeast Asia, the Philippines, central Pacific islands and now the Caribbean (ClimateWire, Nov. 10).
Reprinted from Climatewire with permission from Environment & Energy Publishing, LLC. www.eenews.net, 202-628-6500
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28 Comments
Add CommentYet another stupid headline and article by Scientific American trying to propose that global warming is the root cause of any environmental issue in the world. This is a wonderful example of bias in journalism. Was the temperature change the cause of the coral dieoff? Answer---certainly unknown since there were many other potential causes. In fact, there is zero evidence that the temperature change was the problem.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@sisko,'
"Yet another stupid headline and article by Scientific American trying to propose that global warming is the root cause of any environmental issue in the world."
It must be so much fun making up arguments to knock down that no one is actually making. Intellectual Dishonesty thy name is Sisko.
"Was the temperature change the cause of the coral dieoff? Answer---certainly unknown since there were many other potential causes."
Let me see if I go to Google scholar and put in the search terms "coral+thermal stress" I get:
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=+%22coral%2Bthermal+stress&hl=en&btnG=Search&as_sdt=2001
Perhaps you would be interested in this peer reviewed article in particular:
"Experimental Evidence for High Temperature Stress as the Cause of El Niño-coincident coral mortality"
http://www.springerlink.com/content/pj641521uk266477/
Abstract:
"High temperature tolerance experiments performed on Pocillopora damicornis, a major reef-building coral in the tropical eastern Pacific, resulted in loss of zooxanthellae, histopathological abnormalities, and mortality similar to that observed during the severe 1982–83 El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) event. Coral vitality declined significantly at 30–32°C during a 10-week period, but remained high at normal temperatures (26–28°C). Laboratory time courses to coral morbidity and death were similar to those observed in the field. Experimental high temperatures had a greater negative effect on corals from the Gulf of Panama, which experiences seasonally cool upwellings, than on corals from the nonupwelling Gulf of Chiriqui"
Now that is what I dug up in less than a minute. What is your excuse for this virulent strain of ignorance you insist on propagating?
Here you go, Sisko,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0013969
The original article, complete with 48 reference articles. Knock yourself out.
BTW, is this one of those effects of climate change that will be good for us that you keep talking about?
Personally I think it is very naive to believe that a large number of problems the environment is facing is not a consequence of global warming, either directly or indirectly. Coral bleaching has been shown to be greatly affected by changes in sea temperature (as the links presented above show), and furthermore considering that global temperature change is a variable that affects reefs all over the world which were previously known to be healthy, the possibility of the effects of temperature on coral reef bleaching becoming apparent with increasing global sea temperatures makes for a logical and scientific hypothesis.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMeanwhile, moving up to 2010,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://climateprogress.org/2010/10/20/coral-bleaching-die-off-worst-ever/
@chris- so are you saying that global warming is the cause of the coral die off??? That is the inference of Scientific American. Have you ruled out the other potential causes? (No) Might there have been a shift in ocean currents, other contamination that caused the coral to die??? (yes)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRegarding the benefits of a warmer world overall.....would not the ocean getting warmer overall (if that happened) result in new areas for coral to grow?? (yes)
I tend to disagree with everyone:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this- This article refers to the 2005 Caribbean coral die-off as a specific 'event' somehow connected to the general increase in global temperatures over the past 20-200 years. It does not explain how this specific die-off in a recent specific peak year, in a specific ocean, would be produced by a general warming trend. It would seem that there must be other, perhaps even more critical, contributing factors producing this die-off.
- The commentator's supporting evidence seems to support only the assertion than global warming is generally bad for coral, not what happened in 2005 in the Caribbean.
Of course, the answer to everything now is to blame it on global warming, immediately followed by the need to take action. Please think. This planet was a lot warmer in the middle ages than it is now. Farmers were growing wheat in Greenland only a thousand years ago, all well documented. Global warming has been around since the last ice age some 20 thousand years ago. No human activity has caused or influenced that. Will somebody please look at the larger picture before drawing short term conclusions? Or at least admit that we don't know?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this...: Today we are well on our way to becoming the first global extinction caused by our own "way of Life"... http://ecodelmar.org/ocean_acidification ...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thiswe may simply loose the source of oxygen required for most life forms on Earth and in the Oceans... phytoplankton and trees... without them, mass extinction is inevitable... the question is... can we apply the brakes to this trillion ton industrial revolution before it runs over a mountain top that has no bridge... and the question before that is... do we even recognize that we are driving the trillion ton train that is causing Ocean Acidification that will cause mass extinction... while so many don't even hear the train...
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http://EcoDelMar.org/ocean_awareness
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Large decreases in atmospheric oxygen detected...
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/O2DroppingFasterThanCO2Rising.php
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..:: "Phytoplankton produce more oxygen than all plant life on Earth and are vital in maintaining the earth’s atmosphere. ... reducing oxygen capacity by about 50 percent with a small pH change of 0.25 units.
http://www.terrain.org/articles/21/burns.htm
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..:: as the ocean loses its ability to absorb carbon dioxide, its ability to regulate our global climate and supply oxygen will falter, resulting in reduced breathable oxygen....
http://treehugger.com/files/2010/07/today-on-planet-100-ocean-acidification-101-video.php
..:: Ocean Acidification and the Effects to Open Ocean and Coastal Ecosystems Presentation by Dr. Richard Feely, AGU Fellow and Supervisory Oceanographer at the NOAA.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NelQ2cxoEUc
..:: Ocean Acidification - The Ocean's Chemistry Is Changing, and We're The Cause : http://planetgreen.discovery.com/travel-outdoors/explainer-ocean-acidification.html
..:: "It will take tens of thousands of years for ocean chemistry to return to a condition similar to that occurring at pre-industrial times....
Reducing CO2 emissions is the only practical way to minimize the risk of large-scale and long term changes to the oceans...
http://www.global-greenhouse-warming.com/ocean-acidification.html
"the SCIENCE is there, the "political will" is NOT there," ... it could take thousands of years or longer to reverse the increased acidity of the oceans.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2007/12/16/23138/oceans-growing-acidity-alarms.html
..:: "This is further evidence we are well on our way to the next great extinction event," the University of Queensland in Australia and a co-author of the report.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/07/04/96966/report-oceans-deteriorating-health.html
Caribbean Coral Die-off Worries Scientists; Skeptics/Denialists Say It Just Cannot be Global Warming
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI just love the passion that the denialists have today, and how quickly they are attracted to any SciAm article dealing with global warming, especially challenging specialized scientists in fields they know nothing about.
This is a perfect example, with "reef specialists" and "coral biologists" saying that 2010 may be the worst year ever for coral death in the Caribbean, and that Southeast Asia and Indian Ocean coral bleaching "may prove to be the worst such event known to science." Coral thrives in places like the Caribbean because of constant temperatures, but during the 2005 die-off, water temperatures off the Virgin Islands rose just 3°C above the average, with little recovery in the Caribbean since.
A number of factors besides water temperature can cause coral bleaching and die-offs, including pollution and storms. But temperature is the number-one culprit in such a massive die-off, says reef specialist C. Mark Eakin of NOAA. The extent of warming in the Caribbean is more devastating in 2010 than in 2005, previously the worst year for bleaching there.
Personally, I believe it is temperature-related combined with acidification of the oceans, due to more dissolved CO2. A July 2010 article in Scientific American quoted marine geologist William Howard of the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Cooperative Research Center in Hobart, Tasmania stating that "the current rate of ocean acidification is about a hundred times faster than the most rapid events" in the geologic past. The ocean absorbs large amounts of carbon dioxide -- about 22 million tons a day -- thus the reason that acidification is occurring at a rate much higher than in the last 20 million years.
Coral Reefs Under Rapid Climate Change and Ocean Acidification
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAtmospheric carbon dioxide concentration is expected to exceed 500 parts per million and global temperatures to rise by at least 2°C by 2050 to 2100, values that significantly exceed those of at least the past 420,000 years during which most extant marine organisms evolved. Under conditions expected in the 21st century, global warming and ocean acidification will compromise carbonate accretion, with corals becoming increasingly rare on reef systems. The result will be less diverse reef communities and carbonate reef structures that fail to be maintained. Climate change also exacerbates local stresses from declining water quality and overexploitation of key species, driving reefs increasingly toward the tipping point for functional collapse.
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/318/5857/1737.abstract?ijkey=c0782831b3ac8af89d3ebb354cd8f4605207d89c&keytype2=tf_ipsecsha
Climate change and the Caribbean coral bleaching, again
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOctober 25, 2010
There's an upswing of skepticism about climate change of late, thanks in part to the crazy season in the US (and I'm not talking about the baseball playoffs, although they have been pretty surprising too). While the pundits argue, the climate keeps on moving.
Severe bleaching and coral morality is typically observed when the values of "degree heating weeks"(DHW) exceed 8 deg C-week. Basically, the same long period of warm water temperatures that heled spawn the destructive 2005 Atlantic hurricane season caused unprecedented coral bleaching event in the eastern Caribbean.
Five years later, a Caribbean "heat wave" has happened again. I've been writing for months that there was a strong likelihood of extensive coral bleaching in the Caribbean this fall according to NOAA's advance forecast of sea surface temperatures (in fact, we had a good inkling of this last summer). Now we're getting reports of bleaching from observers in the Caribbean. Add this to the observations (following predictions, once again!) from Southeast Asia and the Equatorial Pacific, and we have what may be the most, or second most, extensive "global" coral bleaching event in recorded history.
http://simondonner.blogspot.com/2010/10/climate-change-and-caribbean-coral.html
There's an upswing of skepticism about climate change of late, thanks in part to the crazy season in the US:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisReally, what does the Republicans "climate zombies" accomplish?
A colleague mentioned this list (also see Joe Romm) of statements about climate change by Republican candidates for Senate. With one exception, they all doubt that human activity is responsible for climate change.
Sure I agree with all the commentators that the stance of all these candidates is depressing. The similarity of their statements suggests that it has less to do with what the individual's actually think about climate change, than the fact that climate change has become so politicized in the U.S. that Republicans need to express doubt in order to win their party's nomination. From their vantage point, denial and doubt is the only viable option.
As such, what's far more depressing to me than the statements themselves is what those statements imply about the utter failure to communicate the science of climate change and the rationale for climate change solutions in a non-partisan way.
http://simondonner.blogspot.com/2010/09/really-what-does-republicans-climate.html
What I wrote in the 1st comment is correct. Scientific American is a biased publication that is promoting the position that AGW is a dire emergency and that American's must immediately and drastically reduce their CO2 emissions to save the world environment.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe data does not support these positions.
Lakota-- You continually use the label of denier, but I am unsure of what that term means to you. I agree with all the statements below.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPlease answer the following to see if you agree or disagree
1. Humans are contributing to increased atmospheric CO2
2. Human released CO2 is likely contributing to a warmer climate, but due to secondary effects/impacts it is not currently understood what impact the human released CO2 will have on climate. (we can not tie a specific level of atmospheric CO2 to a predicted average temperature)
3. There have been prior periods of warming and cooling on earth for which the causes are not understood, but do not appear to be related to CO2
4. A potentially warmer planet will happen over a time span of at least decades, and more likely longer. The warmer planet will have negative consequences for humans in some regions while other regions have positive impacts.
5. Regardless of United States actions, worldwide human released CO2 will continue to rise substantially over the next 25 years
@Sisko,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"The data does not support these positions."
Both Lakota and I have given links and abstracts to peer reviewed papers that contradict your assertions. That you have chosen to ignore the evidence and simply repeat yourself demonstrates the vacuous. Now when will you address the data that has been presented?
@trent1492-- My assertions are factually correct. Here is a link demonstrate my point.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2010/11/18/testimony-to-the-house-subcommittee-on-energy-and-environment/
Please read it as it is an excellent summary from a noted scientist who is saying the same thing I have been posting. I am sorry, but you are simply misguided in your positions
@Sisko,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhy are you not addressing the data and articles that have linked to you? Your link does nothing to address that data. Do you think if you ignore it will go away?
@Trent1492- from the link you posted- "Very little is known about how environmental changes such as increasing temperature affect disease dynamics in the ocean". The link you posted supports my post.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am in no way stating that what humans are doing to the oceans is a positive effect. What I posted is that Scientific American continually publishes articles that infer that increased atmospheric CO2 by humans is the primary cause of almost all environmental ills. It this case, Scientific American did the same thing. Again, there is insufficient evidence to support this claim. There is certainly insufficient evidence to assert that AGW was the cause of the coral die off.
Actually here is what it really says?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Experimental high temperatures had a greater negative effect on corals from the Gulf of Panama, which experiences seasonally cool upwellings, than on corals from the nonupwelling Gulf of Chiriqui. The condition of obligate symbiotic crustaceans (Trapezia, Alpheus) associated with experimental corals declined with their host's declining condition"
Why lie? Who do you think your kidding here? You have been present a larger number of peer reviewed articles that directly contradict your stated position. Again, why do you resort to such dishonesty?
Trent1492--- How is it when I copy and paste from your link that I am lying??? You may disagree, but please do not continue to be so stupid that you accuse me of lying.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat I have written is factually correct. This article is a great example of bias in publishing and does not support the conclusions written in the article.
@sisko: @trent1492-- My assertions are factually correct. Here is a link demonstrate my point.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this===========================
Typical denialist using links to conservative stink tanks like cato and fossil fuel industry insiders like patrick michaels that republican congresscritters use to prove a delusional point. I expect more of this anti-science political rhetoric and GOP grandstanding over the next 2 years in the republican-controlled House, since this is what the fossil fuel industry has paid-for in 2010 corporate American campaign contributions.
Skeptics Group Discounts Some Skeptics Arguments
An internal 1995 document of the Global Climate Coalition (GCC) -- an industry front group of skeptics --- reviewed some of the "contrarian" arguments used by Patrick Michaels, Robert Jastrow, Richard Lindzen and other climate change skeptics. The document, which was obtained as part of a court action against the automobile industry concluded that of the arguments reviewed:
"The contrarian theories raise interesting questions about our total understanding of climate processes, but they do not offer convincing arguments against the conventional model of greenhouse gas emission-induced climate change. Jastrow's hypothesis about the role of solar variability and Michaels' questions about the temperature record are not convincing arguments against any conclusion that we are currently experiencing warming as the result of greenhouse gas emissions. However, neither solar variability nor anomalies in the temperature record offer a mechanism for off-setting the much larger rise in temperature which might occur if the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases were to double or quadruple."
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Patrick_J._Michaels
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Hey sisko, instead of posting from anti-science internet sites like the 'World Climate Report,' a blog published by patrick michaels' 'New Hope' PR firm, funded entirely by the fossil fuel industry, try looking at peer-reviewed scientific journals like the rest of us give you all the time, with links and scientific research!
Besides, you're just trying to confuse the issue and change the subject of this thread, "Caribbean Coral Die-off Worries Scientists," and my posts referring to reef specialists and coral biologists should hold much more scientific weight than your republican PR firm's testimony before political congresscritters only trying to make political points for the fossil fuel industry!
@sisko: "I agree with: Humans are contributing to increased atmospheric CO2 AND human released CO2 is likely contributing to a warmer climate."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this========================
GREAT!....then why are you using contrarian arguments from fossil fuel industry insiders like patrick michaels, only out to protect his benefactors, exactly like every one of the congresscritters in Washington?
While I agree that stopping ALL worldwide CO2 emissions immediately will have no effect for at least 100 years or more, disregarding canaries in the coal mine like mass die-offs of Caribbean corals, certainly does not mean we should be doing nothing today. The rate that we have been using sequestered carbon for over 150 years now, needs to be stopped, and the fossil fuel industry needs to be made accountable for their manufactured doubt campaign.
@sisko: "Yet another stupid headline and article by Scientific American....there is zero evidence that the temperature change was the problem."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this=====================
Actually, your continuous ad hominem attacks on SciAm get very old, and you appear to be lying in wait to make the very first post on so many articles, and especially those dealing with global warming.
As a matter of fact, there's quite a bit of scientific EVIDENCE by REEF SPECIALISTS and CORAL BIOLOGISTS disproving your utter denialism, but one needs to look at those peer-reviewed scientific articles and research instead of living by internet BLOGS like you do!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"How is it when I copy and paste from your link that I am lying???"
That has already been shown in DETAIL by me and two other posters. You are simply asking for the evidence that has already been produced, on this VERY thread. All you have done is go to a Google Search result and pick one sentence out. That is the sum total of your dishonesty. Hell you will not even tell what article it is from. Yet, you ignore the factual concreted scientific findings posted on this thread. In short you are a dishonest.
@Sisko,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo I decided to look up your Sisko's mysterious One-Sentence-That-Disproves-All-of Coral Biology and here is what I found. This is what Sisko selectively quoted:
"Very little is known about how environmental changes such as increasing temperature affect disease..."
Please note he never included the eclipses. And now (as Paul Harvey would say) for the rest of the story:
"....especially at large spatial scales. We asked whether the frequency of warm temperature anomalies is positively related to the frequency of coral disease across 1,500 km of Australia's Great Barrier Reef. We used a new high-resolution satellite dataset of ocean temperature and 6 y of coral disease and coral cover data from annual surveys of 48 reefs to answer this question. We found a highly significant relationship between the frequencies of warm temperature anomalies and of white syndrome, an emergent disease, or potentially, a group of diseases, of Pacific reef-building corals. The effect of temperature was highly dependent on coral cover because white syndrome outbreaks followed warm years, but only on high (>50%) cover reefs, suggesting an important role of host density as a threshold for outbreaks. OUR RESULTS *INDICATE THAT THE FREQUENCY of TEMPERATURE ANOMALIES, which is predicted to increase in most tropical oceans, CAN INCREASE the SUSCEPTIBILITY of CORALS to DISEASE, LEADING to OUTBREAKS WHERE CORALS ARE ABUNDANT."
So the very article (which you never linked too) you cited refutes your contention. I believe that is know as a own goal.
Link:
Thermal Stress and Coral Cover as Drivers of Coral Disease Outbreaks
http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.0050124
Shall we read what the authors summary or have you had enough of the humble pie for the day?
*The caps are my own insertion into the cited material for the hard of learning.
I did not state that the warmer ocean did not have an impact on the coral. I stated that Scientific American wrongly leaps to the conclusion that long term climate change was the cause of the coral deaths, and many other things; without any data to link the cause to the effect.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe links that trent1492 supplied did not demonstrate the link between long term climate change and the coral in any way.
It is supposed to be Scientific American not Propaganda American
"I did not state that the warmer ocean did not have an impact on the coral"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYes, you did. In your first post.
Here let us take a look:
"Yet another stupid headline and article by Scientific American trying to propose that global warming is the root cause of any environmental issue in the world. This is a wonderful example of bias in journalism. Was the temperature change the cause of the coral dieoff?"
Then what follows is a barrage of peer reviewed articles demonstrating just that. The links were EXPLICITLY made clear in those articles between coral mortality and higher temperatures.
That you deny this is simply testament to your own stupidity.