Near-annual extreme heat in the Coral Sea, including in 2024, is causing back-to-back mass bleaching events in the iconic Great Barrier Reef.
. The researchers drilled into coral skeletons from in and around the region and analyzed the chemical makeup of those samples to reconstruct sea surface temperatures from 1618 to 1995, alongside modern instrumental sea surface measurements spanning 1900 to 2024.
Five of the six hottest years in the record were in the last decade: 2016, 2017, 2020, 2022 and 2024, with temperatures as much as 1 degree Celsius hotter than average.Scientists drilled into corals in the Great Barrier Reef to collect core samples. The chemical makeup of the corals reveals changing water conditions, including temperature, over the corals’ lifetime.). Corals can bounce back, given time. But back-to-back bleaching can ultimately kill a reef.
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