Majority of Coral Reefs Will Be Damaged by 2030 Due to Rising Greenhouse Gases
Most concerns when it comes to rising greenhouse gas emissions involve changes to aspects of climate: warmer air temperatures, erratic weather patterns and the impacts of these trends on landscapes and agriculture. One of the most immediate dangers to the environment, though, is a drastic change to the chemistry of an ecosystem that covers 71 percent of the planet but many of us rarely see—the ocean.
As we covered previously, higher concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere result in an increasingly acidic ocean, as roughly a third of the carbon dioxide we emit annually (35 billion metric tons) diffuses into the surface layer of water and is converted into carbonic acid. Scientists have long known that a more acidic ocean poses grave problems for wildlife, especially for creatures associated with coral reefs, which are home to one quarter of all species of life in the oceans.
Scientists have not only been studying how acidic and warmer waters harm ocean life but also how quickly that damage is happening, and they can now put a number on the extent of the potential damage: At least 70 percent of coral reefs are projected to suffer from degradation by 2030 without a dramatic change in how much carbon we emit, according to a study published yesterday in Nature Climate Change. Scientists from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and elsewhere arrived at this number by conducting the first comprehensive global survey of the impact of both acidification and climate change on coral reefs.
“Our findings show that under current assumptions regarding thermal sensitivity, coral reefs might no longer be prominent coastal ecosystems if global mean temperatures actually exceed 2 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial level,” says lead author Katja Frieler of the Potsdam Institute. Many prominent climatologists now believe that there is “little to no chance” of avoiding a 2 degrees Celsius (3.5 degrees Fahrenheit) increase and view it as a realistic best-case scenario even if we begin curtailing greenhouse gas emissions immediately.