Great Barrier Reef: Signs of recovery despite major coral bleaching

[polgara]

[h=2]How Gaia and coral reefs regulate ocean pH[/h][FONT="][FONT=inherit]Posted on[/FONT] [URL="https://judithcurry.com/2016/10/13/how-gaia-and-coral-reefs-regulate-ocean-ph/"]October 13, 2016[/URL] | 20 comments[/FONT]
by Jim Steele
Although some researchers have raised concerns about possible negative effects of rising CO2 on ocean surface pH, there are several lines of evidence demonstrating marine ecosystems are far more sensitive to fluxes of carbon dioxide from ocean depths and the biosphere’s response than from invasions of atmospheric CO2. There is also ample evidence that lower pH does not inhibit photosynthesis or lower ocean productivity (Mackey 2015). On the contrary, rising CO2 makes photosynthesis less costly.
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Greetings, Jack. :2wave:

Very interesting link! :thumbs: I had never seen the "Gaia theory" explained in detail before, and I had to conclude that "whoever" or "whatever" set the Big Bang process in motion had all the various minutiae covered, ie, no "mistakes" happened. We are like toddlers trying to understand advanced trigonometry - we tend to misinterpret what we don't understand about climate change, which may explain why the explanations about what the future may hold for us keeps getting pushed even further into the future when what was expected doesn't occur when it was projected by models to do so. :?:

Lastly, one line in particular caught my attention - " ... increasing CO2 concentrations have an increasingly smaller effect on ocean pH." That's good news since over 70 percent of this planet is covered by oceans and seas, so catastrophe caused by too many humans breathing doesn't seem to be a problem at this time - but feeding them all might be something that should be looked at. :shock:

 

[Threegoofs]

Worst-ever coral bleaching event continues into fourth year | New Scientist


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Jack Hays]

[h=1]Falling Sea Level: The Critical Factor in 2016 Great Barrier Reef Bleaching![/h]Guest essay by Jim Steele Director emeritus Sierra Nevada Field Campus, San Francisco State University and author of Landscapes & Cycles: An Environmentalist’s Journey to Climate Skepticism It is puzzling why the recent 2017 publication in Nature, Global Warming And Recurrent Mass Bleaching Of Corals by Hughes et al. ignored the most critical factor affecting…

 

[longview]

[h=1]Falling Sea Level: The Critical Factor in 2016 Great Barrier Reef Bleaching![/h]Guest essay by Jim Steele Director emeritus Sierra Nevada Field Campus, San Francisco State University and author of Landscapes & Cycles: An Environmentalist’s Journey to Climate Skepticism It is puzzling why the recent 2017 publication in Nature, Global Warming And Recurrent Mass Bleaching Of Corals by Hughes et al. ignored the most critical factor affecting…

We do not normally think about it this way, but when an El Nino event causes a large water bulge in the central
Pacific, the water has to come from somewhere!
Coral can take many things, lack of water likely is not one of them.

 

[Tim the plumber]

[h=1]Falling Sea Level: The Critical Factor in 2016 Great Barrier Reef Bleaching![/h]Guest essay by Jim Steele Director emeritus Sierra Nevada Field Campus, San Francisco State University and author of Landscapes & Cycles: An Environmentalist’s Journey to Climate Skepticism It is puzzling why the recent 2017 publication in Nature, Global Warming And Recurrent Mass Bleaching Of Corals by Hughes et al. ignored the most critical factor affecting…

To determine the cause of coral mortality, careful examination of bleached coral by divers is required to distinguish whether bleached coral were the result of storms, crown-of-thorns attacks, disease, aerial exposure during low tides, or anomalously warmer ocean waters. Crown-of-thorns leave diagnostic gnawing marks, while storms produce anomalous rubble. Furthermore aerial surveys only measure the aerial extent of bleaching, but cannot determine the depth to which most bleaching was restricted due to sea level fall. To distinguish bleaching and mortality caused by low tide exposure, divers must measure the extent of tissue mortality and compare it with changes in sea level. For example, the Indonesian researchers found the extent of dead coral tissue was mostly relegated to the upper 15 cm of coral, which correlated with the degree of increased aerial exposure by recent low tides. Unfortunately Hughes et al never carried out, or never reported, such critical measurements.

When I was fixing an experiment in school not finding the obvious thing that would require oads more work was the first step in avoiding homework.

Good to see that this approach is alive and well in the top of the science community.

 

[Threegoofs]

new data shows that the Coral Reef sure isnt looking good.

https://www.theguardian.com/environ...-latest-coral-bleaching-data?CMP=share_btn_tw

Great Barrier Reef at 'terminal stage': scientists despair at latest coral bleaching data
‘Last year was bad enough, this is a disaster,’ says one expert as Australia Research Council finds fresh damage across 8,000km
• ‘Australia’s politicians have betrayed the reef and only the people can save it’

Christopher Knaus and Nick Evershed
Sunday 9 April 2017 17.01 EDT

Back-to-back severe bleaching events have affected two-thirds of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, new aerial surveys have found.

The findings have caused alarm among scientists, who say the proximity of the 2016 and 2017 bleaching events is unprecedented for the reef, and will give damaged coral little chance to recover.

Scientists with the Australian Research Council’s Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies last week completed aerial surveys of the world’s largest living structure, scoring bleaching at 800 individual coral reefs across 8,000km.

The results show the two consecutive mass bleaching events have affected a 1,500km stretch, leaving only the reef’s southern third unscathed.

Where last year’s bleaching was concentrated in the reef’s northern third, the 2017 event spread further south, and was most intense in the middle section of the Great Barrier Reef. This year’s mass bleaching, second in severity only to 2016, has occurred even in the absence of an El Niño event.
...Some reef scientists are now becoming despondent. Water quality expert, Jon Brodie, told the Guardian the reef was now in a “terminal stage”. Brodie has devoted much of his life to improving water quality on the reef, one of a suite of measures used to stop bleaching.

 

[Jack Hays]

[h=1]Over the top: the sad case of Tripp Funderburk & the Coral Restoration Foundation International[/h]Sometimes, people just go “over the top”. That’s a nice way of putting what happened to Tripp Funderburk when he got too wrapped up in blind disagreement over a story we recently carried at WUWT by Jim Steele: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/04...-factor-in-2016-great-barrier-reef-bleaching/ Note the picture shows exposed coral, and some of the coral has bleached. Seems a no-brainer…
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[Jack Hays]

[h=1]Study: some coral reefs are adapting to ‘climate change’ just fine[/h]WCS coral expert finds that some reefs were less sensitive to warming water over time NEW YORK (May 2, 2017) – A new WCS study reveals evidence that some corals are adapting to warming ocean waters – potentially good news in the face of recent reports of global coral die offs due to extreme warm…

 

[beefheart]

No Cookies | The Courier Mail



Interesting.

I've dove it many times on live aboard boats, 5 dives a day. It is an amazing and beautiful place, but it takes coral a long time to grow. There are things we can do to help, like transplanting and building underwater structures for more growth, but it needs protection.

 

[Jack Hays]

Climate News / Oceans
An Ecologist’s Plea to Dr. Terry Hughes: The Public Needs Robust Science Regards Coral Bleaching, Not Fearmongering!

Guest essay by Jim Steele Director emeritus Sierra Nevada Field Campus, San Francisco State University and author of Landscapes & Cycles: An Environmentalist’s Journey to Climate Skepticism Recently Dr. Terry Hughes published the paper Global Warming and Recurrent Mass Bleaching of Corals (henceforth Hughes 2017) and concluded “immediate global action to curb future warming is…

Recently Dr. Terry Hughes published the paper Global Warming and Recurrent Mass Bleaching of Corals (henceforth Hughes 2017) and concluded “immediate global action to curb future warming is essential to secure a future for coral reefs.” However, his conclusions are simply not borne out by his evidence. Uncritically blaming global warming, is bad science. Organisms are only affected by local conditions, not a chimeric global average. Believing global warming accounts for everything, Hughes failed to see the critical natural factors that locally drove the Great Barrier Reef 2016 bleaching event.
Although researchers agree coral undergo thermal stress when temperatures exceed 1 to 2°C of their local summer maximum, there has been no trend in maximum summer temperature in the northern Great Barrier Reef. In Climate Change and the Great Barrier Reef: A Vulnerability Assessment (2007), Smithers reported on the comparison of mean maximum sea surface temperatures for both the northern and southern Great Barrier Reef (GBR). Since 1903 the average temperature of the southern GBR warmed by 0.7°C and the northern GBR by 0.4°C. But more importantly Smithers reported the mean maximum sea surface temperature between the decades of 1910 to 1919 and 1990 to 1999 showed “a 0.6°C SST rise on the southern GBR but no change in the northern GBR”. So, without a long-term trend of increasing maximum temperatures,climate change, whether natural or anthropogenic, did not contribute to the region’s thermal stress or promote bleaching.
The southern GBR experienced the least bleaching despite a century of warming and contrasts with the northern sector’s severe bleaching and high mortality where maximum temperatures remained unchanged. This paradox contradicts Hughes’ global warming attribution. But Hughes 2017 dismissed this contradiction by creating a false dichotomy between weather and climate stating, “Arguably, southern reefs of the Great Barrier Reef would also have bleached in 2016 if wind, cloud cover and rain from ex-tropical cyclone Winston had not rescued them.” In other words, Hughes blamed the lack of bleaching in the south on weather, but the extreme bleaching in the north on global warming. But it was weather that caused the northern GBR’s extreme bleaching. . . .

 

[Lord of Planar]

No Cookies | The Courier Mail



Interesting.

The alarmists hats keep falling off, from where they hang them.

 

[Threegoofs]

The alarmists hats keep falling off, from where they hang them.

You realize the article was basically quotes from the tourism industry complaining that scientists are going to scare away tourists if they talk about coral bleaching, right?

 

[Jack Hays]

[h=2]Professor Peter Ridd facing misconduct charges for not selling peer review as sacred unquestionable testimony[/h]
Professor Peter Ridd has made the mistake of putting scientific standards ahead of collegial comfort. What was he thinking?
He seems to feel he should serve the people of the Queensland instead of helping the careers of co-workers and admin staff.
Obviously, as a profit-making institution, James Cook is doing the only thing it can — sending a dire message to all staff they they will risk their job if they mistakenly think they have academic free speech. (Though Ridd is actually proposing more jobs for scientists, which is normally a plus, this is the wrong kind of work. We can’t have that.)
Jennifer Marohasy has more details. Apparently, in The Australian, he dared suggest that we need a group of scientists to check other scientists pronouncements on the Great Barrier Reef:
The federal government is set to spend more than $1 billion on the Great Barrier Reef in the next few years to mitigate the effects of climate change, based largely on research that is claimed not to have been subjected to proper scrutiny.

James Cook University physics professor Peter Ridd writes in a new book that the credibility of key research papers driving investments in the reef rest on “a total reliance on the demonstrably inadequate peer-review process’’.
Professor Ridd argues for the establishment of a properly funded group of scientists whose sole job is to find fault in the science “upon which we are basing expensive public policy decisions regarding the Great Barrier Reef’’.
Listen to Professor Peter Ridd talk on 2GB: 2:12 minutes.
Ridd is being accused of “Not acting in a collegial way” (or something like that, no one is allowed to say for sure) and is under investigation for serious misconduct. Ridd wants to get the Barrier Reef science (and policy) right:

“It’s [the Great Barrier Reef policy] affecting the sugar industry, the cattle industry, the mining industry, the tourism industry…”“there is a certain duty of care on scientists to make sure they get it right. I don’t think they are..”…in other areas of science when they do proper checking about half of it is wrong, so why aren’t they trying to check it.They want to shoot the messenger…”​

Peer review is a cursory look at the science, they don’t review the data, but if you are going to spend a billion dollars…

 

[Jack Hays]

Alarmism
[h=1]Aussie Coral Reef Rises from the Dead[/h]Guest essay by Eric Worrall h/t JoNova – the Australian ABC reports scientists from the Australian Institute of Marine Science are surprised how rapidly the Australian Great Barrier Reef is recovering from the 2016 bleaching event. Great Barrier Reef starts to recover after severe coral bleaching, survey of sites between Cairns and Townsville shows By…

 

[Fenton Lum]

It appears, that despite some claims to the contrary, the Great Barrier reef is not on deaths doorstep. Do we, need to make sure we are not polluting the waters, doing what we can to negate our impact to this natural treasure? Certainly, but hysteria doesn't help.

Someone should inform the fossil fuel industry.

 

[eohrnberger]

Alarmism
[h=1]Aussie Coral Reef Rises from the Dead[/h]Guest essay by Eric Worrall h/t JoNova – the Australian ABC reports scientists from the Australian Institute of Marine Science are surprised how rapidly the Australian Great Barrier Reef is recovering from the 2016 bleaching event. Great Barrier Reef starts to recover after severe coral bleaching, survey of sites between Cairns and Townsville shows By…

A good thing.

 

[Threegoofs]

A good thing.

Funny how you guys were saying that the reef hasn’t been affected in a major way, and then when the scientists who said it was affected in a major catastrophe now note that it might recover slightly more quickly than anticipated (barring another warm year, which is more likely than not), it’s somehow absolutely true and a good thing.

FYI, here’s the link to the original news story, since the JH version is one denier blog reporting on another denier blogs interpretation of the news story.

 

[Threegoofs]

Link here: Great Barrier Reef starts to recover after severe coral bleaching, survey of sites between Cairns and Townsville shows - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

 

[Jack Hays]

Funny how you guys were saying that the reef hasn’t been affected in a major way, and then when the scientists who said it was affected in a major catastrophe now note that it might recover slightly more quickly than anticipated (barring another warm year, which is more likely than not), it’s somehow absolutely true and a good thing.

FYI, here’s the link to the original news story, since the JH version is one denier blog reporting on another denier blogs interpretation of the news story.

Link here: Great Barrier Reef starts to recover after severe coral bleaching, survey of sites between Cairns and Townsville shows - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

All linked within the WUWT post in #89.

 

[Jack Hays]

Scientists surprised that reef that survived the hotter holocene is already recovering from 2016 bleaching

Coral which has produced eggs near Fitzroy Island. Photo AIMS, Neal Cantin.
​

The ABC reports today that the Great Barrier Reef is recovering “surprisingly” fast.

Optimism is rising among scientists that parts of the Great Barrier Reef that were severely bleached over the past two years are making a recovery.
Scientists from the Australian Institute of Marine Science this month surveyed 14 coral reefs between Cairns and Townsville to see how they fared after being bleached.
The institute’s Neil Cantin said they were surprised to find the coral had already started to reproduce.
Who would have thought that after 5,000 years of climate change, sea level change, temperature change and super-storms every 200 years — that the Great Barrier Reef would have something left up its sleeve?
Much of the ABC reporting on the Great Barrier Reef damage uses vague terms. If I was feeling cruel, I might call them “weasel words”:
Nearly two thirds of the Great Barrier Reef was affected by bleaching in 2016 and 2017, killing up to 50 per cent of coral in those parts.
So which parts are “those parts”? Did 50% of the corals die in two-thirds of the reef? Or has two thirds of the reef been affected by a small amount of bleaching while a much smaller number of reefs were hit by the apocalyptic 50% death-rate? There must be a better way to describe the damage. As it is, it is a number mush. (If only the ABC had a dedicated science unit they would be able to make sense of difficult concepts like this.)

“What it means is the corals along the entire Great Barrier Reef, are survivors that are going to reproduce earlier than expected which could help drive quicker recovery if we don’t see another heat stress this summer,” he said.
“This is a positive news story for a change for the Great Barrier Reef. We’re seeing eggs and we hope those eggs will lead to somewhat of a successful spawning season this summer.”
When climate-sameness would be remarkable…

The Barrier Reef survived the Holocene peak for hundreds of years, so we might assume that the reef has ways to deal with hotter conditions and changing temperatures. Sea levels in Queensland were 1 – 2 meters higher 5,000 years ago. (Lewis 2012) Super cyclones have been hitting the coast of Queensland for the last 5,000 years and there is no sign that storms are getting worse. (see Nott 2001 and Hayne 2001.)
Corals have survived warmer periods and worse storms

Globally it was hotter 5,000 years ago, and sea levels were a lot higher in Queensland:

Sea Levels have been falling for 4,000 years in Queensland during the Holocene. Lewis et al 2012.
​

From a post in 2012 on 5000 year trends in storms in Australia:
Nott and Hayne studied a 5000 year history of super-cyclones along a 1500 km stretch of North East Australia and concluded that the big nasty ones hit roughly every 200-300 years in all parts of the coastline from 13° – 24°S . . .

Keep reading →







Rating: 9.6/10 (62 votes cast)

 

[eohrnberger]

Funny how you guys were saying that the reef hasn’t been affected in a major way, and then when the scientists who said it was affected in a major catastrophe now note that it might recover slightly more quickly than anticipated (barring another warm year, which is more likely than not), it’s somehow absolutely true and a good thing.

If I posted such, please quote it.

All my post was pertaining to was that the Great Barrier Reef wasn't as bad off as apparently previously thought. My post is little more that than this being a good thing.

And you object to my post. :roll:

FYI, here’s the link to the original news story, since the JH version is one denier blog reporting on another denier blogs interpretation of the news story.

Whatever.

 

[longview]

It is good that the reefs are recovering.
Rather than water temperature, I had read that the extremely low tides (Likely related to the El Nino)
caused more of the coral to be exposed to air, and bright sunlight.
Coral mortality following extreme low tides and high solar radiation - School of Biological Sciences - Centre for Marine Science - The University of Queensland, Australia

We argue that extreme low-tide, high-irradiance events are important structuring forces of intertidal coral reef communities, and can be as damaging as thermal stress events. Importantly, they occur at a time of year when risks from thermal stress, cyclones and monsoon-associated river run-off are minimal.

 

[Jack Hays]

back from the dead http://www.news.com.au/technology/environment/climate-change/eggs-discovered-in-bleached-coral-birth-new-hope-for-great-barrier-reef/news-story/4fd45204f25e9d8c98e5226b678afa31#.8n1mz…

. . . Tiny sacs of white eggs in bleached coral have been found by researchers from the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS).
Researchers diving on reefs between Townsville and Cairns, some of the worst affected areas of bleaching, were assessing the mortality and survivorship of the region when they made their find.
The eggs are still developing, but this indicates that the bleached corals are preparing to spawn again. . . .