There’s more bad news for planet Earth if climate change continues unabated. New research published on October 11 in the open access journal PLOS Biology by researchers at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, United States reveals that, under a worst-case scenario, half of coral reef ecosystems worldwide will permanently face unsuitable conditions in just a dozen years.
October 11, 2022
There’s more bad news for planet Earth if climate change continues unabated. New research published on October 11 in the open access journal PLOS Biology by researchers at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, United States reveals that, under a worst-case scenario, half of coral reef ecosystems worldwide will permanently face unsuitable conditions in just a dozen years.
The ability of ecosystems to adapt to changes within their environment largely depends upon the type and impact of their specific environmental stressors. Coral reefs, in particular, are sensitive to these unsuitable environmental conditions. However, the timeline for environmental suitability has been up for debate.
Utilizing CMIP5, an experimental framework designed to compute global models designed to improve climate change knowledge, researchers looked at global projections of five environmental stressors from historic scenarios through to projections for the year 2100.