Australian Academy Of Sciences: 70-99% Of Great Barrier Reef Corals Will Die; 1.5C "Impossible"
The Great Barrier Reef is all but doomed, with between 70 and 99 per cent of corals set for destruction unless immediate “transformative action” is taken to reverse global warming, according to a new report.
The Australian Academy of Science says the more ambitious target of the Paris Climate Agreement of keeping global warming to 1.5 degrees has now slipped out of reach and is “virtually impossible”. “Limiting the temperature rise to the lower Paris Agreement target is exceedingly difficult, and with only three or four more years of emissions at current levels remaining, the target has become virtually impossible to achieve,” says The Risks to Australia of a 3C Warmer World.
If 1.5 degrees of warming was sustained, the Great Barrier Reef would cease to exist as we know it, says one of the authors, Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, a biologist and climate scientist specialising in coral reefs.
At 1.5 degrees of warming, the reef would shrink by 70 to 90 per cent. At 2 degrees, just 1 per cent of the reef would survive. If warming was stabilised, surviving corals suited to warmer temperatures may eventually return to cover the reef. Should it continue unabated, corals would vanish entirely to be replaced by other organisms such as seaweeds and bacteria, said Professor Hoegh-Guldberg.
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https://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/barrier-reef-doomed-as-up-to-99-percent-of-coral-at-risk-report-finds-20210331-p57fng.html