[Coral-List] coral reefs in 5th (U.S.) National Climate Assessment

Sun Nov 19 21:45:53 UTC 2023

Thanks Doug- at last, the truth is revealed- LOL!

Of course most of us old timers already knew this.  But sadly coral
bleaching is not only the biggest cause of coral reef decline, but it is
the one cause of coral reef decline that virtually nothing is being done to
prevent it from killing corals in the field.

The global thermostat clearly "broke" in March, with an off-scale surge of
0.7C which is 5 s.d. above the 1982-2011 mean, and with this occurring even
before El Nino kicked in, https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/sst_daily/
 Have we now entered the "great dying" for coral reefs?  Sadly we still
have no comprehensive or widely recognized strategy to save the corals.

Many in our community have been traumatized by the recent die offs in
Florida and the Caribbean.  I wonder if we have been so stunned by the hit
in the face of losing all these precious corals, and being too involved
with grieving our loss to react or to reach out to help raise the global
alarm- that a massive Lahaina-level firestorm in the ocean is now
potentially spreading to the coral reefs of the Southern Hemisphere?  Yes
it is already warming up down here, yes it is not the best time to break
corals and to move corals, just like it was too dangerous to move the
children in Lahaina, far too smoky and dangerous to move them - so many
decided to shelter in place.  We can not make that mistake.

Where is the publicity and where are the reports on the mass coral die-offs
that just happened throughout the Caribbean?  Will this horrific event be
widely published in the public media- or will the various nations suppress
the facts, protecting their tourism economies from the negative impacts
that happened to GBR tourism after in 2015-16 coral bleaching and die-offs
there. We need strong and clear leadership, and that is not yet coming
forth.

Past thermal stress on the GBR has historically paralleled what the
Caribbean has experienced, which does not bode well.  What will happen to
the GBR when we experience >20 DHW stress levels, which most Caribbean
nations just went through?  The NOAA models, while they look quite bad, may
be under-predicting due to the new off scale thermal baseline, noone in the
Caribbean was prepared for the scale of what happened.  But we must now
open our eyes, and we see that Kiribati is already experiencing record heat
stress- and that is the South Pacific and Australia's front door!   The
next few weeks and months could be our last chance to rescue our most
heat-adapted corals from our hottest reef areas, areas similar to what just
experienced hot-tub-like temperatures in the Caribbean. This could be our
last opportunity to translocate diverse species and genotypes from such hot
areas out to cooler waters, as insurance against losing our most heat
adapted corals and symbiont genetics from our surviving coral populations.
Our goal now should be to secure enough heat adapted coral diversity to be
able to work on resilience-based restoration, focused on cooler reef areas,
which could soon become dominated by dead corals.

Regards to all,

Austin

Austin Bowden-Kerby, PhD
Corals for Conservation
P.O. Box 4649 Samabula, Fiji Islands

https://www.corals4conservation.org
Publication on C4C's coral-focused climate change adaptation strategies:
https://www.mdpi.com/2673-1924/4/1/2/pdf
Film on our "Reefs of Hope" coral restoration for climate change adaptation
strategies:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BG0lqKciXAA
TEDx talk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PRLJ8zDm0U
https://www.globalgiving.org/projects/emergency-response-to-massive-coral-bleaching/
<https://www.globalgiving.org/projects/emergency-response-to-massive-coral-bleaching/>

Teitei Livelihoods Centre
Km 20 Sigatoka Valley Road, Fiji Islands
(679) 938-6437
http:/www.
<http://permacultureglobal.com/projects/1759-sustainable-environmental-livelihoods-farm-Fiji>
teiteifiji.org
http://permacultureglobal.com/projects/1759-sustainable-environmental-livelihoods-farm-Fiji
https://www.globalgiving.org/projects/happy-chickens-for-food-security-and-environment-1/

On Mon, Nov 20, 2023 at 12:45 AM Douglas Fenner via Coral-List <
coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov> wrote:

> Mass coral bleaching due to heatwaves which are increasingly caused by
> global warming is widely considered to be the greatest future threat to
> coral reefs, and has probably already killed more coral colonies than
> anything else that humans do.
>
> The report can be accessed at:
>
> https://nca2023.globalchange.gov/
>
> To quote from the report:
>
> "Even short-term extreme events such as heatwaves78
> <https://nca2023.globalchange.gov/chapter/8/#fn:78>,79
> <https://nca2023.globalchange.gov/chapter/8/#fn:79>,80
> <https://nca2023.globalchange.gov/chapter/8/#fn:80> can generate
> significant species impacts. For example, coral reefs are threatened by
> cumulative impacts of ocean warming and acidification, marine heatwaves
> resulting in bleaching and higher susceptibility to diseases, increasingly
> powerful tropical cyclones causing loss of structural complexity, hypoxia
> (low oxygen) events, overfishing, and pollution (Figure 8.10a
> <https://nca2023.globalchange.gov/chapter/8/#fig-8-10>, b
> <https://nca2023.globalchange.gov/chapter/8/#fig-8-10>; Box 10.1
> <https://nca2023.globalchange.gov/chapter/10#box-10_1>; KMs 9.2
> <https://nca2023.globalchange.gov/chapter/9#key-message-2>, 10.1
> <https://nca2023.globalchange.gov/chapter/10#key-message-1>).81
> <https://nca2023.globalchange.gov/chapter/8/#fn:81>,82
> <https://nca2023.globalchange.gov/chapter/8/#fn:82>,83
> <https://nca2023.globalchange.gov/chapter/8/#fn:83>,84
> <https://nca2023.globalchange.gov/chapter/8/#fn:84>,85
> <https://nca2023.globalchange.gov/chapter/8/#fn:85>,86
> <https://nca2023.globalchange.gov/chapter/8/#fn:86>"  (quote from chapter
> 8   https://nca2023.globalchange.gov/chapter/8/ )
> Reference 81: Carlson, R.R., S.A. Foo, and G.P. Asner.  2019. Land use
> impacts on coral reef health: a ridge-to-reef perspective. Frontiers in
> Marine Science 6: 562.
>
> Reference 82: Evensen, N.R., Y.-M. Bozec, P.J. Edmunds, and P.J. Mumby.
> 2021. Scaling the effects of ocean acidification on coral growth and
> coral-coral competition on coral community recovery. PeerJ 9: e11608/
>
> Reference 83: Johnson, M.D. et al. 2021. Rapid ecosystem-scale consequences
> of acute deoxygenation on a Caribbean coral reef. Nature Communications 12
> (1) 4522.
>
> Reference 84: Magel et al, 2019. Effects of bleaching-associated mass coral
> mortality on reef structural complexity across a gradient of local
> disturbance. Scientific Reports 9(1) 2512
>
> Reference 85: Sampaio, E.C., et al 2021. Impacts of hypoxic events surpass
> those of future ocean warming and acidification. Nature Ecology & Evolution
> 5(3) 311-321.
>
> Reference 86: Smale, D. A. et al. 2019. Marine heatwaves threaten global
> biodiversity and the provision of ecosystem services. Nature Climate Change
> 9(4) 306-312.
>
>
> The report has loads of information on the climate change that threatens
> coral reefs, including things like:
>
> Present-day levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are higher than at
> any time in at least the last 800,000 years
>
> The rate of sea level rise in the 20th Century was faster than in any other
> century in at least 3000 years.
>
> Global temperature has increased faster in the last 50 years than at any
> time in at least the past 2000 years.
>
> The current drought in the western US is now the most severe drought in at
> least 1200 years and has persisted for decades.
>
> Wind and solar energy costs dropped 70% and 90% respectively over the last
> decade, while 80% of new electricity generating capacity in 2020 came from
> renewable sources.
>
> Between 2018 and 2022 the US experienced 89 weather events that each
> cost a billion dollars or more.  Extreme weather events cost the US over
> $150 billion dollars a year.   Florida alone had $90 billion in costs
> between 2018 and 2022.
>
> Land areas are warming faster than oceans, and polar areas (particularly
> the Arctic) are warming faster than tropical areas.
>
> In other news, the last 12 months were the hottest 12 months in recorded
> history, and 2023 is likely to be the hottest calendar year in
> recorded history.
>
>
> https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-03523-3?WT.ec_id=NATURE-202311&sap-outbound-id=B2FD55754B1E18A2FF3F0FDFC89C7D069C43BF7F
>
> Cheers, Doug
>
> --
> Douglas Fenner
> Lynker Technologies, LLC, Contractor
> NOAA Fisheries Service
> Pacific Islands Regional Office
> Honolulu
> and:
> Coral Reef Consulting
> PO Box 997390
> Pago Pago, American Samoa 96799-6298  USA
>
> Huge expansion of fossil fuels planned, will be very destructive
>
> https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/08/insanity-petrostates-planning-huge-expansion-of-fossil-fuels-says-un-report
>
> "without policy changes, the world will heat up enough by the end of the
> century that more than 2 billion people will live in life-threatening hot
> climates"         Will you be in that area???
>
> https://www.yahoo.com/news/scientists-sounding-alarm-dangerous-problem-123000792.html
>
> World subsidies for fossil fuels reached an all-time high of over $1
> TRILLION in 2022, the last year for which data is available.  The subsidies
> MUST end.
>
>
> https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/fossil-fuel-subsidies-must-end/
> _______________________________________________
> Coral-List mailing list
> Coral-List at coral.aoml.noaa.gov
> https://coral.aoml.noaa.gov/mailman/listinfo/coral-list
>