NOAA - 2023-24 Global Coral Bleaching Event Is The Largest Ever, Spanning 72 Countries, 74% Of Warm-Water Reefs
The current mass coral bleaching event affecting dozens of countries worldwide is now the largest event ever recorded, scientists have confirmed. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in April declared that the world was undergoing its fourth global bleaching event, the second in the past ten years. At the time, at least 53 countries had been experiencing mass bleaching. The number has since gone up to 72.
This is the largest mass bleaching event on record, the US agency told Reuters last week. Satellite images revealed that a staggering 77% of the world’s coral reefs have been affected by bleaching across all the regions where warm-water corals live: the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres.
“This event is still increasing in spatial extent and we’ve broken the previous record by more than 11% in about half the amount of time,” said NOAA Coral Reef Watch coordinator Derek Manzello. “This could potentially have serious ramifications for the ultimate response of these reefs to these bleaching events.”
EDIT
One of the best examples of coral bleaching is the Great Barrier Reef, the world’s largest and longest reef system located off the coast of Queensland, Australia; it covers about 350,000 square kilometres – an area that is larger than the UK and Ireland combined. The stunning coral reef system has already suffered six mass bleaching events in 1998, 2002, 2016, 2017, 2020, and 2024. The events in 2016 and 2017 were so severe that they led to the death of 50% of the iconic reef. Aside from Australia, coral death has been particularly pronounced in regions such as South Asia, the Pacific, East Asia, the Western Indian Ocean, The Gulf, and Gulf of Oman.
EDIT
https://earth.org/global-coral-bleaching-event-now-largest-on-record-noaa-says/
= new reply since forum marked as read
