{"id":460929,"date":"2026-02-10T22:01:15","date_gmt":"2026-02-10T22:01:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/460929\/"},"modified":"2026-02-10T22:01:15","modified_gmt":"2026-02-10T22:01:15","slug":"bangkok-post-three-year-heatwave-bleached-half-the-planets-coral-reefs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/460929\/","title":{"rendered":"Bangkok Post – Three-year heatwave \u2018bleached half the planet\u2019s coral reefs\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Researchers warn current bleaching event will eclipse damage seen from 2014-17<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Australia\u2019s<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAustralia\u2019s Great Barrier Reef experienced rising heat stress between 2014 and 2017, a period that has come to be known as the the three-year period known as the \u201cThird Global Bleaching Event\u201d. (Photo: AFP)\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

PARIS – A study published on Tuesday showed that more than half of the world\u2019s coral reefs were bleached between 2014 and 2017 \u2014 a record-setting episode now being eclipsed by another series of devastating heatwaves.<\/p>\n

The analysis concluded that 51% of the world\u2019s reefs endured moderate or worse bleaching while 15% experienced significant mortality over the three-year period known as the \u201cThird Global Bleaching Event\u201d.<\/p>\n

It was \u201cby far the most severe and widespread coral bleaching event on record\u201d, said Sean Connolly, one the study\u2019s authors and a senior scientist at the Panama-based Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd yet, reefs are currently experiencing an even more severe Fourth Event, which started in early 2023,\u201d Connolly said in a statement.<\/p>\n

When the sea overheats, corals eject the microscopic algae that provides their distinct colour and food source.<\/p>\n

Unless ocean temperatures return to more tolerable levels, bleached corals are unable to recover and eventually die of starvation.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur findings demonstrate that the impacts of ocean warming on coral reefs are accelerating, with the near certainty that ongoing warming will cause large-scale, possibly irreversible, degradation of these essential ecosystems,\u201d said the study in the journal Nature Communications<\/a>.<\/p>\n

An international team of scientists analysed data from more than 15,000 in-water and aerial surveys of reefs around the world over the 2014-17 period.<\/p>\n

They combined the data with satellite-based heat stress measurements and used statistical models to estimate how much bleaching occurred around the world.<\/p>\n

No time to recover<\/p>\n

The two previous global bleaching events, in 1998 and 2010, had lasted one year.<\/p>\n

\u201c2014-17 was the first record of a global coral bleaching event lasting much beyond a single year,\u201d the study said.<\/p>\n

\u201cOcean warming is increasing the frequency, extent, and severity of tropical-coral bleaching and mortality.\u201d<\/p>\n

Australia\u2019s Great Barrier Reef, for instance, saw peak heat stress increase each year between 2014 and 2017.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are seeing that reefs don\u2019t have time to recover properly before the next bleaching event occurs,\u201d said Scott Heron, professor of physics at James Cook University in Australia.<\/p>\n

A major scientific report last year warned that the world\u2019s tropical coral reefs have likely reached a \u201ctipping point\u201d \u2014 a shift that could trigger massive and often permanent changes in the natural world.<\/p>\n

The global scientific consensus is that most coral reefs would perish at warming of 1.5C above preindustrial levels \u2014 the ambitious, long-term limit countries agreed to pursue under the 2015 Paris climate accord.<\/p>\n

Global temperatures exceeded 1.5C on average between 2023 and 2025, the European Union\u2019s climate monitoring service, Copernicus, said last month.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are only just beginning to analyse bleaching and mortality observations from the current bleaching event,\u201d Connolly told AFP.<\/p>\n

\u201cHowever the overall level of heat stress was extraordinarily high, especially in 2023-24, comparable to or higher than what was observed in 2014-17, at least in some regions,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He said the Pacific coastline of Panama experienced \u201cdramatically worse heat stress than they had ever experienced before, and we observed considerable coral mortality\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Researchers warn current bleaching event will eclipse damage seen from 2014-17 Australia\u2019s Great Barrier Reef experienced rising heat…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":460930,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[30595,74224,192,6733,79],"class_list":{"0":"post-460929","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-coral-bleaching","9":"tag-coral-reefs","10":"tag-environment","11":"tag-global-warming","12":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460929","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=460929"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460929\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/460930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=460929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=460929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=460929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}