Cooler regions of the sea called ‘thermal refugia’ provide safe havens for coral reefs by protecting them from warmer temperatures, but such sanctuaries will be entirely lost if the global temperature rises by 2°C before the end of this century.
by protecting them from warmer temperatures, but such sanctuaries will be lost if the global atmospheric temperature rises by 2°C before the end of this century.
“We’ve known that climate change will be catastrophic for coral reefs for decades. Now, with better models and a finer resolution, our work shows that corals worldwide will be even more at risk from climate change than we thought,” saysRising sea temperatures can lead to coral bleaching, where corals expel the
that normally live within their tissue and provide them with nutrients. This means bleached corals are more likely to die.Regions of cool water called thermal refugia result from local weather events and help to protect corals from bleaching and death. In coastal regions, surface waters can be pushed away from the shore by winds, which pulls deeper, cooler water upwards in a process called upwelling.
This movement of cooler water means that upwelling can give reefs in shallow water temporary respite during hotter times of the year. Strong ocean currents, tides and tropical cyclones can also help to cool down reefs in between hotter periods. Using temperature measurements from Earth observation satellites, Dixon and her colleagues found that between 1986 and 2019, 84 per cent of shallow-water reefs benefited from thermal refugia. This means they had enough time between marine heatwaves to recover, says Dixon.
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