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coral reefs
As Ocean Temperatures Rise, Coral Reefs Face Closing Window for Recovery From Climate Damage
Persistent marine heatwaves are causing a "staircase of decline that becomes harder to reverse with every bleaching event," said one scientist.
Aug 31, 2026
The destruction of coral reef cover, cataloged in the largest global assessment of the reefs ever completed, was distressing to scientists, with the world's reefs declining by nearly 10% between 2020-24, compared with 1980-2009.
The authors of the report released Monday by Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network (GCRMN), however, emphasized that coral bleaching events driven by ocean heating was not the most worrisome finding of the analysis—but rather, the fact oceans have become so warm that stressed reefs have less and less time to recover.
Historically, coral bleaching events—in which changes in conditions such as ocean temperatures and pollution cause coral to expel its symbiotic algae and become completely white and more vulnerable to mortality—have taken place about once in a decade, giving the reefs years to recover.
Now, the reefs are “lucky to get five or six years,” as water temperatures are remaining high and making it more difficult to regain hard coral cover, explained Manuel González Rivero of the Australian Institute of Marine Science, the lead author of the report, titled “Status of Coral Reefs of the World: 2025.”
“After decades of studying coral reefs, what concerns me most isn’t the current loss of hard coral cover; it’s that we’re steadily eroding the conditions they need to recover,” said González Rivero. “Climate change is driving more frequent and severe marine heatwaves, but local pressures such as poor water quality, overfishing, and coastal development are making reefs even less able to withstand them."
The study compiled 21.1 million observations from 36,886 reef sites across 124 countries and territories, drawing on more than 40 years of data from across the globe.
But scientists cautioned that because the research did not include the most recent and intense global bleaching event, which lasted from 2023-25, it may not provide a full picture of the danger coral reefs are in—as well as the coastal communities they help protect and the thousands of marine species they serve as a habitat for.
Carlos Duarte, a marine scientist at the Coral Research and Development Accelerator Platform, told The New York Times that this year's El Niño warming trend is likely to cause another global bleaching event next year, which reefs will likely struggle to recover from as ocean temperatures have been recorded as getting hotter and hotter in recent years.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has projected that the Earth will lose 70-90% of its coral reef cover if the planet gets 1.5°C hotter than its preindustrial level.
"For many reefs affected by the unprecedented marine heatwaves in 2024, this year’s El Niño likely means they’ll have had little more than a year to begin recovering before being hit again," said González Rivero. "This is creating a staircase of decline that becomes harder to reverse with every bleaching event.“
The report emphasizes that reefs have maintained their ability to regain hard coral cover "when disturbances are reduced and sufficient recovery time is available," such as after the third major global coral bleaching event since 1998, which took place from 2016-17 and saw a 6.6% decline in coral.
After the event, scientists observed a "relative increase of approximately 6% between 2017 and 2019," said the GCRMN.
"That recovery matters because the benefits coral reefs provide extend far beyond the reef itself. Coral reefs cover less than 0.2% of the ocean floor," said the organization. "Yet, they support at least 25% of all marine species and underpin food security, livelihoods, coastal protection, tourism, and cultural heritage of close to one billion people worldwide."
Scientists including Terry Hughes, a former director of coral reef studies at James Cook University in Australia, who was not involved in the analysis, emphasized that reducing planet-heating emissions is the top solution to the crisis of coral reef recovery, as the pollution from fossil fuel extraction is linked to increasingly hot oceans.
Allowing coral reefs to recover from bleaching events "really depends on how much more greenhouse gases go into the atmosphere and the amount of warming that causes," Hughes told the Times, while local solutions including reducing water pollution are also crucial for maintaining reef health.
David Obura, chair of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, expressed hope that the report will "shake us out of our persistent inertia."
The long-term monitoring by GCRMN, said Obura, "tracks not just the pulse of coral reefs, but of our planet too. It shows which regions are under the greatest pressure, that actions to date have not been sufficient, and warns where reefs will be under increasing threat in years to come."
"We must act now to halt this decline and invest in solutions that reduce pressures and build resilience, while sustaining the monitoring that turns good intentions into effective policy," he said. "The 40 years of data in this report provide a strident warning that delayed action risks locking in irreversible losses—not just to reefs, but also to the economies and people that depend on them.”
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Study Suggests Climate Crisis Is Supercharging 'Godzilla' El Niños
"We are seeing a trend of stronger El Niños, and the one we have now is consistent with that trend," said the lead author. "That is bad news for climate hazards and for people."
Aug 27, 2026
As the flooding disaster in Tibet and Nepal demonstrates the deadly consequences of the climate emergency, experts wrote Thursday in the journal Science that fossil fuel-driven global heating has intensified the warm phase of a key pattern in the Pacific Ocean.
The El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) has a warm phase, called El Niño, as well as a neutral phase and a cold one, La Niña. In June, scientists declared the start of a warm event nicknamed "Godzilla," which helped push last month's average global ocean surface temperature to the hottest ever recorded in July.
The current event is expected to become not only a super El Niño, but the most intense one on record—and it could contribute to 2027 possibly being the hottest year humanity has ever endured.
While ENSO is a naturally occurring phenomenon, the scientists behind the new paper studied coral skeletons from the Galápagos Islands and concluded that global warming—tied to humans continuing to burn fossil fuels—has intensified El Niño phases.
"Our findings suggest El Niño can supercharge global warming, but also global warming can supercharge El Niño—that is what we are seeing," said lead author Julia Cole, who chairs the University of Michigan's Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences.
The scientist also spoke with Inside Climate News, which noted that "the first documented super El Niño in 1982-83 killed about 95% of the shallow-water corals around the Galápagos Islands, right around the time Cole began her research career."
Based on the team's analysis, "after the El Niño in 1982, we start seeing much more variability; it's a lot more extreme and looks like nothing in the previous 1,000 years," Cole told The Guardian. "What surprised me was how consistent it was. There is just such a large, distinct difference between what has been happening in the last 40 years compared to preindustrial times."
As Inside Climate News reported:
When Cole visited the islands in 1989, many of the large mapped corals that could have served as sample material were gone, wiped out by the El Niño early in the decade and then decomposed quickly by organisms in the biologically active waters. But in 2006, her team discovered fossil coral remnants, often perched as boulders near remote east-facing coastlines, tossed inland by large waves or tsunamis.
Cole said the signal of El Niños intensified by human-caused warming would have been even stronger if the study had included the most recent occurrences. All the events categorized as super El Niños have occurred since the 1980s and have triggered flooding in East Africa, led to disease outbreaks, and intensified tropical storms. This year’s El Niño is intensifying drought in Indonesia, fueling widespread fires that are sending smoke and hazardous air pollution across Southeast Asia, Cole said. Her team is currently analyzing corals to show the changes from the El Niños in 2015-16 and 2023-24, she added.
"We are seeing a trend of stronger El Niños, and the one we have now is consistent with that trend—it's not a fluke. We are seeing a shift where El Niño doesn't look like what it did prior to industrial times," Cole said. "That is bad news for climate hazards and for people, particularly those who are badly impacted and yet have done little to cause climate change."
According to the United States' National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, consequences of El Niño include "increased rainfall across the southern tier of the US and in Peru, which has caused destructive flooding, and drought in the West Pacific, sometimes associated with devastating brush fires in Australia."
Dalhousie University marine scientist Boris Worm wasn't involved with the new study but told The Associated Press on Thursday that "El Niño is the most violent aspect of climate variability worldwide, with effects ranging from local fisheries collapse, to widespread coral die-offs to severe droughts, and food shortages around the world."
Experts are already worried about the latest El Niño's impact on food security and prices, with the United Nations World Food Program projecting earlier this month that almost 50 million more people worldwide face the prospect of acute hunger.
Pointing to late climate scientist Wallace Broecker's warning that "the climate system is an angry beast and we are poking it with sticks," Worm said that "human emissions are the stick, and El Niño is [one] of the 'angry' outbursts that can be so threatening to our collective safety."
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The Renewable Energy Revolution Is Unstoppable
By every measure, shifting from fossil fuels to electrification, renewables, and energy efficiency and conservation is far more beneficial to most people than following the same fossil-fueled road.
Jan 04, 2026
There’s good news and bad news on the climate front. Unfortunately, the bad news is horrific, as accelerating extreme weather-related events and other unfolding climate catastrophes show. But there are signs of hope. We just have to stop dragging our feet.
“We are already facing danger,” a scientists’ statement from the November COP30 climate summit in Belém, Brazil warned, adding, “COP30 has a choice—to protect people and life or the fossil fuel industry.”
Too many governments, including Canada’s, appear to be leaning toward the latter.
“We need to start, now, to reduce CO2 emissions from fossil fuels, by at least 5% per year,” the scientists wrote. “This must happen in order to have a chance to avoid unmanageable and extremely costly climate impacts affecting all people in the world.”
The only ones who benefit from continuing to exploit polluting, climate-altering fossil fuels are greedy industry profiteers and short-sighted politicians who would trade human health, economic resilience, and survivability for a handful of short-term jobs and limited economic boosts.
Studies show that “rising heat is killing roughly one person per minute, and air pollution from the burning of fossil fuels claims an estimated 2.5 million lives every year,” DW news reports. It was also “costing as much as $304 billion in global economic losses last year.”
We’ve already passed one climate “tipping point,” with warming oceans causing irreversible mass coral reef die-offs, and we’re nearing others, including Amazon rainforest devastation and collapse of crucial ocean currents.
Coral reefs support one-quarter of all marine life, and the Amazon rainforest has more animal and plant species than any other terrestrial ecosystem. It also regulates global climate and weather and holds one-quarter of the planet’s available freshwater. Ocean currents also regulate global climate and weather.
Even though emissions continue to rise as the world refuses to halt fossil fuel development and forest and wetland destruction, investments in and growth of renewable energy technology are exceeding expectations, now outpacing fossil fuel investments.
DW reports that “in 2024, the world experienced its largest-ever increase in renewable energy generation, which now provides 40% of global electricity. In the first half of this year solar and wind exceeded all demand growth for electricity, surpassing coal for the first time.” Solar capacity is doubling every three years. Wind power has tripled since 2015. The International Energy Agency reports that global renewable energy investments exceeded US$2 trillion last year, double the amounts committed to coal, oil, and gas.
To increase energy security in the face of a growing global energy crisis and reduce their reliance on increasingly expensive, inefficient fossil fuels, countries that import oil, gas, and coal are rapidly advancing electrification and renewables.
Analysis from COP30 also shows that “sticking to three key climate promises—on renewables, energy efficiency, and methane—would avoid nearly 1°C of global heating and give the world hope of avoiding climate breakdown,” the Guardian reports.
But the world continues to burn dirty, polluting coal, gas, and oil at deadly rates and has increased subsidies to the fossil fuel industry—the most profitable enterprise in history!
Canada has failed to live up to its promise to phase out fossil fuel subsidies. The federal and provincial governments are supporting expanded development of methane gas exploitation and liquefaction, and are proposing pipelines to ship more dirty bitumen from the Alberta oil sands to British Columbia ports for export, where it will be burned in other countries and not counted in our emissions reporting.
Canada’s expansion of liquefied “natural” gas production is not only economically suspect, it also makes methane-reduction pledges more difficult to meet, as LNG is almost entirely methane, and leaks and emissions occur at every step of the process, from fracked extraction and transport to liquefaction and burning.
Although 160 countries, including Canada, have signed a Global Methane Pledge, promising to cut methane emissions by 30% from 2020 levels by 2030, emissions continue to rise and countries, including Canada, continue to underreport them.
By every measure, shifting from fossil fuels to electrification, renewables, and energy efficiency and conservation is far more beneficial to most people than following the same fossil-fueled road. The only ones who benefit from continuing to exploit polluting, climate-altering fossil fuels are greedy industry profiteers and short-sighted politicians who would trade human health, economic resilience, and survivability for a handful of short-term jobs and limited economic boosts.
Regardless of what roadblocks fossil-fuelled governments throw in the way, the renewable energy revolution is unstoppable.
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Giving Thanks on an Endangered Earth
So many of us are now searching for a bridge to the world we need. I’m thankful that we’re searching together and for the possibilities we may find.
Nov 27, 2025
The days grow dark here in the North as the year winds down. Friends slowly return from COP30 in Brazil, the frontline of the fight for our climate future, with far too little won. There’s a weight to the air. It’s an age of global polycrisis, an era of authoritarian upsurge, a time of anger, grief, and overwhelm, nesting dolls of troubled times, from the planetary to the personal. And in the US, it’s Thanksgiving, a time when we are meant to gather to show gratitude for the things we’ve been given.
It’s a complicated proposition, giving thanks; it has always looked very different depending on who and where you are in this country. Because what have we been given and by whom? What have we taken and from whom? What is being taken today and who are the takers?
And it grows more complicated each year, giving thanks, as so many of us whose lives are materially abundant increasingly see that abundance less as a blessing and more as our birthright and a legacy to maintain. When in reality, modern materialist lifestyles were always the brittle pretense of an era of extraction that is hollowing out the Earth and our space to be safe upon it—and is starting to crack.
And this year, with cracks appearing everywhere—in our climate, our politics, our communities, our bodies and minds, our very sense of reality—it is profoundly complicated, giving thanks. This era of capitalist extraction and detached materialism has belched up such historic, geopolitical hairballs as Donald Trump presiding over the world’s richest nation for a second time and promptly pulling us out of the Paris Climate Agreement; such inexcusable own goals as global carbon emissions hitting a new record high in 2025; and such multigenerational tragedies as the vital, life-supporting 1.5°C climate target being all but certified dead. (We can overshoot and return to 1.5°C but we’re making this task harder.)
No one knows where this is going—why can’t it be somewhere beautiful?
This follows a decade of urgent talk about the all-important “2030 deadline” for deeply reducing emissions to achieve this target—“we have just 10 years to avoid catastrophic climate change”, wait, “just 5 years”, wait… This was a message that children around the world picked up and shouted, demanding to be heard. But this year, the adults have gone quiet. The deadline will be missed.
So, it’s a complicated thanks. If I consider what really matters to me, each of those things is under some kind of assault. And my thanks is suffused with grief and anger.
But gratitude is powerful. It’s both something we offer up and, when we mean it, it’s a gift we give ourselves that can help us to hold grief, move anger, and bring us into right relation with what is.
So here are things I’m thankful for.
I’m thankful for the food that will be on the table. I’m thankful for the hands that harvested it. I’m thankful for everyday people in cities across the nation, defending our immigrant friends and neighbors from this administration’s inhumanity.
I’m thankful for the defenders of science, justice, and truth, the people who work tirelessly to ensure these pillars of a free and fair society outlast this authoritarian spasm.
I’m thankful for the creators—the ones making the music, writing the words, conjuring the new and unexpected art forms, and drawing forth visions of the possible that can see us through this dark time.
I’m thankful for the elders. Not the arrested-development adolescents wandering the halls of power in old people’s bodies. True elders, people with the wisdom the world so badly needs. May we listen; may we become one ourselves.
I’m thankful for the dreams of young people that spring eternal, with each new generation, and renew the world’s purpose: to let them thrive.
I’m thankful for the beauty of nature. I’ll grieve coral reefs the rest of my days, but I saw them; I witnessed that wonder of creation and I’m grateful. And though I long for a time when witnessing nature’s beauty was simply about awe, not grief, I wasn’t born then. Learning to hold grief and wonder together not only spares us from emotionally shutting down but can open a deep well of strength and equanimity.
I’m thankful for the resilient living Earth. I’m thankful for all that she has absorbed of our foolishness: the consumption, the fossil-fuel pollution, the bottomless corporate greed—she has spared us the true cost of it all. But now the atmosphere is trapping ever more heat; the oceans break out in fevers; the land endures the drought, floods, and fires of its more violent climate. Ecosystems collapse, people suffer, animals are made extinct. This is the Earth seeking new equilibrium; this is the future; we will be less shielded from the consequences of our choices. And yet… the Earth adapts and, if given a chance, life will always seek to thrive.
I’m thankful for the people who, their lifeways tied to the Earth, continue to stand against the madness and for right relations with nature and each other. Around the world, Indigenous people who have suffered immeasurably in these centuries of colonial extraction, but endured, are raising voices and showing ways forward, including at COP30 in Brazil. They’ve been offering wisdom we should have heeded, just as the Mayflower colonists should have heeded, but it’s not too late.
I’m thankful for those cracks, the ones that seem to be appearing everywhere. Bayo Akomolafe says, “The crack is the monster’s gift,” a weakness in the wall, an opening on which to pry. Vanessa Machado de Oliveira invites us to use these openings to “hospice modernity,” to gently deconstruct the sources of destruction, and to grow in their place the world the world needs. More than I can ever recall, so many people seem to sense that world, waiting to be grown; are planting seeds and tending; are questioning what we as humans really need to live rich lives and creating community that can meet those needs. So many of us are now searching for a bridge to the world we need. I’m thankful that we’re searching together and for the possibilities we may find. No one knows where this is going—why can’t it be somewhere beautiful?
And I’m thankful for our capable, willing hands, yours and mine. We’re going to need to pry at the cracks and plant for tomorrow, together. We’re going to need to raise defiant fists and hold out compassionate palms. And we’re all going to need to hold hands as we meet what comes. I wish I had simpler things to tell my children about this moment, I wish giving thanks was simpler. But they are teens and young adults now and their time here will not be simple, so I tell them the truth: Some things are lost. A lot can be saved. I won’t see the world we’re trying to reach. I hope you will. All we can do today is build a bridge to that world. All we can do is hold hands tightly and be the bridge.
Happy Thanksgiving.
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'Our New Reality': Planet Reaches First Climate Tipping Point With Coral Reef Dieback
“We can no longer talk about tipping points as a future risk,” said one researcher. “This is our new reality.”
Oct 13, 2025
Less than two years after researchers at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom warned that the world was nearing numerous climate tipping points, a report out Monday warns that one such "point of no return" has already been reached, with warm-water coral reefs "experiencing unprecedented dieback."
Surging global temperatures, especially in recent years, have pushed the world's coral reefs into a state of widespread decline, with the worst bleaching event on record taking place since 2023. More than 84% of the world's reefs have been impacted.
In the Global Tipping Points Report 2025 released Monday, the researchers warned that "the central estimate" of coral reefs' "tipping point of 1.2°C global warming has been crossed," with planetary heating now at about 1.4°C above preindustrial levels.
The warming waters have caused widespread bleaching of coral reefs, which impacts the nearly a million species of marine animals and organisms that rely on them to support some of the planet's most diverse ecosystems.
“Unless we return to global mean surface temperatures of 1.2°C (and eventually to at least 1°C) as fast as possible, we will not retain warm-water reefs on our planet at any meaningful scale,” the report says. Minimizing non-climatic stressors, particularly improved reef management, can give reefs the best chance of surviving under what must be a minimal exceedance of their thermal tipping point."
The decline of coral reefs also leaves coastal communities without natural barriers against storm surge, compounds the overfishing crisis by depriving fish of a habitat in which to reproduce, and impacts thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in reef tourism each year.
"As we head into the COP30 climate negotiations it’s vital that all parties grasp the gravity of the situation."
"We can no longer talk about tipping points as a future risk,” Steve Smith, a social scientist at the University of Exeter and a lead author of the report, told Nature. “This is our new reality.”
The arrival of the tipping point necessitates immediate, significant reductions in fossil fuel emissions that are driving planetary heating in order to return to a global mean surface temperature of 1.2°C over preindustrial temperatures, but climate scientist Bill McGuire did not mince words Monday regarding the likelihood of mitigating the damage already done to coral reefs.
"We won't reduce temps to 1.2°C as soon as possible, so this is the death knell for most of the world's stupendous reef communities," said McGuire. "Other tipping points will follow."
The report notes that the world is still headed toward other climate tipping points, namely the "large-scale" degradation of the Amazon rainforest, which is projected to "weaken global climate regulation" and accelerate biodiversity loss; the melting of mountain glaciers like Áakʼw Tá Hít in Alaska; and for the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), which regulates the climate by transporting warmer waters from the tropics to the northern Atlantic Ocean, whose likelihood of reaching a tipping point "increases with global temperature" rise.
Without rapid cuts to greenhouse gas emissions, the Global Tipping Points report says, the upper threshold of global temperature rise for coral reefs of 1.5°C is likely to be reached within 10 years.
“We are going to overshoot 1.5°C of global warming probably around 2030 on current projections,” Tim Lenton of the University of Exeter’s Global Systems Institute told The Guardian.
Manjana Milkoreit, a co-author of the report and political scientist at the University of Oslo, told Nature that "we have the knowledge regarding how to stop the Earth from reaching more tipping points."gr
“What we need is a kind of governance that matches the nature of this challenge," she said.
The report also acknowledges "positive tipping points" that could have runaway impacts on the ability to rapidly draw down greenhouse gas emissions, such as the widespread adoption of regenerative agricultural practices and an acceleration in the transition toward electric vehicle and solar power use.
"Solar PV panels have dropped in price by a quarter for each doubling of their installed capacity. Batteries have improved in quality and plummeted in price the more that are deployed," reads the report. "This encourages further adoption. The spread of climate litigation cases and nature positive initiatives is also self-amplifying. The more people undertaking them the more they influence others to act."
Lenton told The Guardian that "the race is on to bring forward these positive tipping points to avoid what we are now sure will be the unmanageable consequences of further tipping points in the Earth system."
As Common Dreams reported last week, global progress toward transitioning away from fossil fuels and expanding the use of renewable energy is surging worldwide—but the US has been left out this year under President Donald Trump, with a major spending bill imposing new fees on solar and wind development and boosting drilling on public lands while the US Department of Energy is investing $625 million in coal.
The Global Tipping Points report was released four weeks before global leaders are set to meet in Belém, Brazil for the 30th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP30), where policymakers will be asked to contribute to a Granary of Solutions: "a reservoir of concrete tools and initiatives—scalable, replicable, and aligned with the Paris Agreement—that connect ambition with implementation" in order to trigger "positive tipping points of transformation leveraging solutions that already exist."
"As we head into the COP30 climate negotiations it’s vital that all parties grasp the gravity of the situation,” Mike Barrett, chief scientific adviser at the World Wide Fund for Nature in the UK and a co-author of the report, told Yale Environment 360. “Countries must show the political bravery and leadership to work together and achieve them.”
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'Graveyard of Corals': Bleaching Led to Great Barrier Reef's Worst Die-Off on Record
"We will ultimately get to a tipping point where coral cover can't bounce back," warned one researcher. "We have to mitigate the root causes of the problem and reduce emissions and stabilize temperatures."
Aug 06, 2025
After last year's climate-fueled bleaching in Australia's famed Great Barrier Reef, large swaths of the GBR suffered the worst coral die-off since records began, a government report revealed Wednesday, prompting renewed calls for reducing greenhouse gas emissions as well as reef conservation and restoration.
The GBR "experienced unprecedented levels of heat stress, which caused the most spatially extensive and severe bleaching recorded to date," the Australian Institute of Marine Science's (AIMS) annual report states.
AIMS studied the health of 124 coral reefs between August 2024 and May 2025 and found that northern and southern branches of the approximately 1,400-mile (2,300 km) GBR suffered the "largest annual decline in coral cover" ever recorded since monitoring began nearly 40 years ago.
Data collected last year from aerial surveys showed that 75% of the GBR had been bleached amid record heat driven by the worsening climate emergency. The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration warned in March 2024 that the bleaching would likely be the worst the world had ever seen.
The new report confirmed that "the 2024 event had the largest spatial footprint ever recorded on the GBR, with high to extreme bleaching prevalence observed across all three regions" of the GBR.
According to AIMS:
In 2025, hard coral cover declined substantially across the GBR, although considerable coral cover remains in all three regions. Regional declines ranged between 14% and 30% compared to 2024 levels, with some individual reefs experiencing coral declines of up to 70.8%. These declines are primarily attributed to coral mortality from the 2024 mass coral bleaching event, compounded by the cumulative impacts of two cyclones in December 2023 and January 2024, freshwater inundation, and some crown-of-thorns starfish activity.
In 2025, 48% of surveyed reefs underwent a decline in percentage coral cover, 42% showed no net change, and only 10% had an increase. Reefs with stable or increasing coral cover were predominantly located in the central GBR.
Scientists described the resulting seascape as a "graveyard of corals."
AIMS research lead Mike Emslie told Agence France-Presse that the "number one cause" of GBR coral decline "is climate change."
"There is no doubt about that," Emslie added.
The problem is by no means limited to the GBR. A mass global bleaching event has devastated more than 80% of the world's coral reefs over the past two years, affecting 82 countries and territories.
Prior to the current die-off, the last major GBR bleaching event occurred in 2014-17, when scientists said nearly one-third of its coral died and approximately 15% of all reefs worldwide experienced major coral deaths.
"These impacts we are seeing are serious and substantial and the bleaching events are coming closer and closer together," Emslie said in a separate interview with The Guardian.
"We will ultimately get to a tipping point where coral cover can't bounce back because disturbances come so quickly that there's no time left for recovery," he warned. "We have to mitigate the root causes of the problem and reduce emissions and stabilize temperatures."
AIMS called for greater global efforts to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions fueling planetary heating, "continued good local management," and more interventions "to help corals adapt and recover."
Larissa Waters, leader of the Australian Greens and a federal senator representing Queensland, on Monday urged the governing Labor Party to "follow the science, set 2035 targets at net-zero, stop new coal and gas, or risk losing our reef, its immense biodiversity, and the 60,000 jobs it sustains."
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Fossil Fuels Blamed as 84% of World's Coral Reefs Hit by Worst Bleaching Event Ever Recorded
"The magnitude and extent of the heat stress is shocking," said one marine scientist.
Apr 23, 2025
A year after scientists warned the world was seeing its fourth mass coral bleaching event, rising ocean temperatures fueled by greenhouse gas emissions have now devastated 84% of Earth's coral reefs—with likely knock-on effects for about a third of all marine species and 1 billion people whose lives and livelihoods are directly impacted by the health of the "rainforests of the sea."
Coral Reef Watch at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) released its latest data on Wednesday, showing the current bleaching event has become the most widespread on record, impacting reefs from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic and Pacific.
The news comes three months after scientists confirmed 2024 was the hottest year on record. Last year, meteorologists also found that sea surface temperatures in the North Atlantic were about 2°F higher than the 1990-2020 average and nearly 3°F above the average in the 1980s.
Unusually warm ocean waters cause corals to expel algae that give the reefs their bright color and deliver nutrients, supporting the immense biodiversity that is normally found within the reefs. Prolonged bleaching can kill coral reefs.
"The magnitude and extent of the heat stress is shocking," marine scientist Melanie McField, the founder of the Healthy Reefs for Healthy People initiative in the Caribbean, told Reuters. "Some reefs that had thus far escaped major heat stress and we thought to be somewhat resilient, succumbed to partial mortalities in 2024."
Derek Manzello, director of Coral Reef Watch, told The Guardian that some reefs that had been considered safe from the impact of rising ocean temperatures have now been bleached.
"Some reefs that had thus far escaped major heat stress and we thought to be somewhat resilient, succumbed to partial mortalities in 2024."
“The fact that so many reef areas have been impacted," he said, "suggests that ocean warming has reached a level where there is no longer any safe harbor from coral bleaching and its ramifications."
The current coral bleaching event began in January 2023. That same year, scientists were alarmed by an ocean heatwave off the coast of Florida that rapidly bleached the continental United States' only living barrier reef.
That event prompted NOAA to introduce a new coral bleaching alert scale from Level 1—significant bleaching—to Level 5, at which point a reef is approaching mortality.
Another ocean heatwave last year threatened Australia's Great Barrier Reef, eight years after nearly half of the coral in some northern parts of the 1,400-mile reef was killed by a mass bleaching event.
But recent major bleaching events affecting specific reefs have not compared to the current widespread devastation in the world's oceans.
“Reefs have not encountered this before," said Britta Schaffelke, coordinator of the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network, told The Guardian. "With the ongoing bleaching it's almost overwhelming the capacity of people to do the monitoring they need to do. The fact that this most recent, global-scale coral bleaching event is still ongoing takes the world's reefs into uncharted waters."
The other three mass bleaching events on record occurred from 2014-17, with 68% of the world's reefs affected; in 2010, when 37% were impacted; and in 1998, when 21% suffered bleaching.
The report from Coral Reef Watch followed the Trump administration's under-the-radar release of climate change data that minimized NOAA's findings about the level of planet-heating carbon dioxide emissions in the atmosphere. President Donald Trump also issued an executive order demanding sunset provisions for every existing energy regulation and notified companies that they can seek exemptions to clean air regulations.
Joerg Wiedenmann, a marine biologist at the Coral Reef Laboratory at the University of Southampton in England, emphasized that taking action to stop the heating of the world's oceans could protect coral reefs, the marine species they provide habitats to, and the communities they support by protecting coastlines and providing fishing and tourism jobs.
"If we manage to decrease ocean warming," Wiedenmann told The Washington Post, "there is always a chance for corals to recover."
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World's Largest Coral Found in Pacific, Unharmed by Planetary Heating
"While the nearby shallow reefs were degraded due to warmer seas, witnessing this large healthy coral oasis in slightly deeper waters is a beacon of hope."
Nov 14, 2024
Scientists announced on Thursday their discovery of the largest coral ever documented off the coast of the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific Ocean and celebrated the fact that the massive underwater ecosystem appears to be unharmed by planetary heating—but said the discovery underscores the need to urgently protect marine environments.
Scientists and filmmakers from National Geographic's Pristine Seas research program, which aims to push governments to protect the oceans, visited a remote site near the Solomon Islands in mid-October, and initially thought the large object just below the ocean's surface was part of a shipwreck.
Cinematographer Manu San Félix dove into the water to examine the object and found that it was actually a huge network of coral polyps.
The coral was found to be 34 meters (111 feet) wide and more than five meters (16 feet) high—larger than a blue whale and big enough to be viewed from space.
The mega coral, or pavona clavus, is thought to be about 300 years old, and scientists said it could provide insight into historical conditions in the world's oceans.
"Protecting the reef cannot make the water cooler, cannot prevent the warming of the ocean. We need to fix that, we need to reduce carbon emissions."
Enric Sala of the Pristine Seas project compared the discovery to "a big patch of old growth forest," telling New Scientist that the coral, which is not showing signs of the bleaching observed in a growing number of reefs around the world, is providing shelter and sustenance to fish, shrimp, worms, and crabs.
"Large adult coral colonies like this contribute significantly to the recovery of coral reef ecosystems due to their high reproductive potential," Eric Brown, a coral scientist told Euronews. "While the nearby shallow reefs were degraded due to warmer seas, witnessing this large healthy coral oasis in slightly deeper waters is a beacon of hope."
But Sala told Euronews that the coral is not necessarily "safe from global warming and other human threats."
Record-breaking ocean temperatures have caused coral bleaching events across the planet over the past two years, impacting biodiversity in the world's oceans as well as increasing the risk of sea-level rise and impacting tourism industries in coastal areas.
Sala said the discovery should push governments to protect more of the world's oceans. About 8.4% of the Earth's ocean is under a marine protected area (MPA) designation, and the Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction treaty was finalized in 2023, pledging to protect the biodiversity of the oceans.
Establishing more MPAs alongside climate action, Sala said, will help shield coral like the one found near the Solomon Islands from pollution and the effects of planetary heating.
"Protecting the reef cannot make the water cooler, cannot prevent the warming of the ocean," Sala told New Scientist. "We need to fix that, we need to reduce carbon emissions. But MPAs can help us buy time by making the reefs more resilient."
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Want to Protect Coral Reefs? Recognize the Rights of Nature
The escalating coral bleaching crisis must serve as a call to action, not just for environmental protection, but for a transformative shift in how we view and relate to Nature.
Nov 12, 2024
Amid the most widespread coral reef bleaching ever recorded, we face a crucial question: How can we implement effective, holistic protections for coral reefs?
For over 30 years, governments and civil society have gathered at United Nations Climate Change Conferences, yet the results have often been superficial and ineffective. Despite scientists’ urgent warnings about the devastating effects of warming beyond 1.5°C, proposed mitigation targets remain unmet, and accountability is absent due to non-binding agreements. Climate policies have largely centered on humanity’s needs in the name of development and economic growth, neglecting the equally vital futures of other species. This oversight has led to repeated failures for Nature, contributing to today’s largest recorded coral bleaching event across 74 countries. Now, scientists warn that even 1.5°C may be too much for coral and ocean health.
News headlines keep warning us of a point of no return, calling attention to fires in the Amazon and yet another massive coral bleaching event. This may seem distant from our daily lives, but the truth is that the problem is closer than we realize—and solutions lie within each of us. Recognizing the inherent Rights of Nature is one such solution.
What Are the Rights of Nature?
Recognizing and respecting Nature’s rights holds the potential to change humanity's relationship with our planet. The Rights of Nature movement traces its roots to Christopher Stone’s 1972 book Should Trees Have Standing? Since then, countless scholars, scientists, and activists have joined the call to recognize Nature’s inherent rights and our responsibility to all other beings with whom we are interconnected.
The Rights of Nature is now a powerful global movement aiming to transform human consciousness, redesign unsustainable economic and social systems, and provide a framework for living in harmony with Nature. Drawing on the wisdom of ancient and Indigenous cultures and leveraging modern law, the movement seeks a balanced relationship between humankind and all forms of life, honoring the natural equilibrium of our biosphere.
Recognizing the rights of corals ensures a holistic approach to ocean protection, safeguarding these crucial ecosystems so they can continue to exist, persist, and regenerate their life-sustaining cycles.
Recognizing the inherent Rights of Nature to protect the future of coral reefs provides a real and holistic solution not only to corals but to the well-being of all species that live among them. The escalating coral bleaching crisis must serve as a call to action, not just for environmental protection, but for a transformative shift in how we view and relate to Nature. By recognizing coral reefs as living entities with inherent rights through the Rights of Nature framework, we move beyond traditional conservation approaches. This holistic lens not only restores and protects coral ecosystems but also elevates the voices and rights of Indigenous communities, whose knowledge and stewardship are vital to these ecosystems’ survival. Granting legal rights to reefs ensures their protection from exploitation and destruction while fostering a deeper respect for the interconnectedness of all life. It’s a crucial step toward securing the future of coral reefs and the communities that depend on them.
Have Coral Reefs Been Granted Rights Around the World?
The Rights of Nature movement allows for a flexible approach, enabling creative implementation tailored to different environments and legal systems. In Ecuador, these rights were embedded in the Constitution in 2008, while Panama established them as National Law (Law 287) in 2022. Various initiatives and campaigns for Ocean Rights, encompassing diverse marine ecosystems, are underway—a majority of them featured in the EcoJurisprudence Monitor.
Just this past September, the Rights of Nature movement had a big win led by the Leatherback Project and local entities when Panama adopted the Saboga Wildlife Refuge under Resolution N° DM-0361-2024, protecting critical sea turtle habitat and recognizing corals’ rights to regenerate their vital cycles. The resolution proposes to “promote the protection of the Rights of Nature, enshrined in Law 287 of 2022, ensuring that the ecosystems within the Saboga Wildlife Refuge are treated as subjects of rights, with the aim of preserving their integrity, regeneration, and ecological balance.” Additionally, the law recognizes the rights of corals to regenerate under this specific clause: “Promote the protection, conservation, and restoration of coral reefs and seagrass meadows, recognizing their importance as critical habitats for marine biodiversity and as fundamental components for the ecological health of the protected area and its resilience to climate change.” The protection of the Saboga Wildlife Refuge will require Panama’s action even beyond the borders of the reserve, as upholding coral and sea turtles' rights will not depend only on what happens inside protected areas.
Who Can Benefit From Corals Having Their Rights Recognized?
Listing coral reefs’ contributions to a healthy ocean could go on endlessly. Thriving coral reefs support thriving ocean life, provide essential nurseries for marine species, and offer reliable food sources. Recognizing the rights of corals ensures a holistic approach to ocean protection, safeguarding these crucial ecosystems so they can continue to exist, persist, and regenerate their life-sustaining cycles. As scientists warn, rising ocean temperatures are damaging coral reefs, making urgent action essential. Oceans know no borders, and governments must implement bold climate mitigation measures to halt and reverse ecosystem degradation. Recognizing Nature’s rights offers an effective and bold solution to achieving this goal. In summary, all benefit from coral reefs having their rights recognized.
How the Rights of Nature Are Being Used Around the World
From Antarctica to the Amazon rainforest to rivers in Bangladesh, the Rights of Nature movement is working to holistically protect vital ecosystems through principles rooted in ancient wisdom and the undoubted connection between humans and Nature. We need to restore our connection to Mother Earth and act boldly for the implementation of real, effective solutions to the polycrises we are facing today. The Rights of Nature movement offers hope for future generations, both human and non-human.
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Highest Ocean Heat in 400 Years Poses 'Existential Threat' to Great Barrier Reef
"In the absence of rapid, coordinated, and ambitious global action to combat climate change, we will likely be witness to the demise of one of Earth's great natural wonders," the authors of a study in Science wrote.
Aug 08, 2024
The Great Barrier Reef recently experienced the highest ocean temperatures in at least four centuries and faces an "existential threat" due to repeated mass coral bleaching episodes, a study published Wednesday in Science found.
The network of coral reefs off of Australia—the world's largest living structure—has faced five of the six hottest three-month periods of average surface temperature ever recorded just since 2016, each of which was accompanied by devastating coral bleaching.
Ocean temperatures around the reef reached a record-breaking extreme from January to March this year, with the three-month mean temperature 1.73°C higher than the pre-1900 average, according to the study, authored by researchers based in Australia.
The study includes climate modeling that attributes the temperatures to fossil fuel-driven carbon emissions, and concludes that urgent climate action is needed.
"This attribution, together with the recent ocean temperature extremes, post-1900 warming trend, and observed mass coral bleaching, shows that the existential threat to the Great Barrier Reef ecosystem from anthropogenic climate change is now realized," the study says.
"In the absence of rapid, coordinated, and ambitious global action to combat climate change, we will likely be witness to the demise of one of Earth's great natural wonders," the authors also wrote.
The Great Barrier Reef is under critical pressure, with warming sea temperatures and mass coral bleaching events threatening to destroy the remarkable ecology, biodiversity, and beauty of the world’s largest coral reef, according to research in @nature. https://t.co/67bXgmfTEn
— Robin Hicks (@RobinHicks_) August 8, 2024
The researchers estimated the surface temperatures for 1618-1899 by using a reconstruction method based on drilling into coral skeletons and analyzing the chemical makeup. For the period from 1900 to 1995, they used both the reconstruction method and measurements by modern instruments, and for the last 30 years they used instrumental data.
They found that temperatures were relatively stable until 1900 but have climbed steadily since, especially since 1960.
The trend has culminated in a series of bleaching events, in which stressed corals expel the microscopic algae in their tissues and become transparent or white. Without the helpful algae, which live inside them symbiotically, corals are at risk of disease and death.
In interviews with journalists, the study authors spoke about the severity of the threat to the Great Barrier Reef and the urgent need for climate action.
"The heat extremes are occurring too often for those corals to effectively adapt and evolve," Ben Henley, a paleoclimatologist at the University of Melbourne and lead author of the study, told The New York Times. "If we don't divert from our current course, our generation will likely witness the demise of one of Earth's great natural wonders, the Great Barrier Reef."
Henley said he snorkeled with his father on the Great Barrier Reef as a child.
"You can't even take in the diversity," he said. "It's a kaleidoscope of color, it's absolutely spectacular."
He said he worries that his own 2-year-old daughter may not be able to enjoy the same experience.
"In her childhood years the reef is likely to see immense destruction," he said.
He called for strong global action so that his daughter and members of her generation could "marvel at the reef in their lifetimes."
Helen McGregor, a scientist at the University of Wollongong and study co-author, told the BBC the new research "could send a huge signal to the world about how grave the problem is."
"We know what we need to do," she added. "We have international agreements in place [to limit global temperature rise]."
Scientists not involved in the study agreed about the importance of the research, not just for the Great Barrier Reef but for coral reefs more generally.
"It's a stunningly important summary of the history of the world's largest reef system," Stephen Palumbi, a marine biologist at Stanford University, told the Times. "The paper lays out the danger that corals all around the world face from this heat."
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