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The NOAA coral reef authority declared the global bleaching event in April 2024, making it the fourth of its kind since 1998. The previous record from the 2014 to 2017 mass bleaching affected just ...
Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is suffering a mass bleaching event, ... Severe mass bleaching at the Great Barrier Reef had previously been observed in 1998, 2002, 2016, 2017, 2020 and 2022 ...
During that time, between 2016 and 2024, the Great Barrier Reef, the world’s largest coral reef ecosystem and one of the most biodiverse, suffered mass coral bleaching events. Earlier this year ...
“In 2024, climate change and other human impacts triggered the fourth mass coral reef bleaching event, the most extensive and devastating on record," said Peter Thomson, the U.N. Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for the Ocean. "With the window to protect these ecosystems closing rapidly, world leaders must act now."
Bleaching has been happening in various regions for some time. In the world's largest coral reef ecosystem, Australia's Great Barrier Reef, bleaching affected 90% of the coral assessed in 2022. The Florida Coral Reef, the third-largest, experienced significant bleaching last year.
That makes this the fifth bleaching event in the Great Barrier Reef in just nine years - far more frequent than the twice per decade that scientists expected by the 2030s.
The Great Barrier Reef experienced its first major bleaching event in 1998. Since then, bleaching events have increased in frequency, with three events occurring in the years 2016–2020. [52] Bleaching is predicted to occur three times a decade on the Great Barrier Reef if warming is kept to 1.5 °C, increasing every other year to 2 °C. [53]
The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority considers the greatest threat to the Great Barrier Reef to be climate change, causing ocean warming which increases coral bleaching. [ 64 ] [ 65 ] Mass coral bleaching events due to marine heatwaves occurred in the summers of 1998, 2002, 2006, 2016, 2017 and 2020, [ 66 ] [ 13 ] [ 67 ] and coral ...