Climate and corals

Ove Hoegh-Guldberg oveh at uq.edu.au
Wed Sep 19 23:37:00 EDT 2001


Dear John,

Thanks for reminding me (again) about your paper from the Panama meeting,
which I have now read.  As you know, I tried (in 1999) to go from
speculation about climate by interacting with three premier climate
modelling groups in Australia, Europe and the USA.  This allowed me access
to models that simulated important aspects within the climate change
debate such as El Nino variability, the impact of aerosols and the forcing
due to IS92a greenhouse scenarios.  By using several models, I was able to
draw on experts in simulating climates and was able reduce the problem of
the bias of one model.

As you know (somewhat depressingly), the scenarios for future patterns of
bleaching did not different greatly between models.  The issue of
acclimation and adaptation is complex and I have a few comments that I
will send through in a separate email.  I feel this debate (as Bob has
noted) is useful and will hopefully clear up some of the recent
understandings.

Regards,

Ove


-----Original Message-----
From: owner-coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov
[mailto:owner-coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov]On Behalf Of John Ware
Sent: Wednesday, 19 September 2001 10:33 PM
To: coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov
Subject: Coral reefs doomed??


Dear List,

For a quantitative view of the effect of acclimation (or adaptation or
whatever), you might wish to consider the paper that I presented at the
8th ICRS, Vol 1:527-532; "The effect of global warming on coral reefs:
acclimate or die".  This was, I believe, the first attempt to quantify
the effect of acclimation rate on the expected response of coral reefs.
In fact, this might have been the first *quantitative* prediction of the
effects of global warming on reefs.

One major conclusion is that even with acclimation rates that would be
considered long by human standards, say 25 - 50 yrs, the chances of
survival of coral reefs are dramatically increased.  Acclimation with
such large time constants may not be detectable using currently
available data or experimental methods.

John

(Note: Despite the rather melodramatic title, this paper has repeatedly
been overlooked by even rather meticulous researchers such as Ove.  Just
my Cinderella complex showing. jrw)

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