Coral Reefs Worldwide Imperiled by Climate Change, Study Says

From an article by Adam Satariano on Bloomberg.com:

Global climate change may push the Great Barrier Reef and other coral colonies past a fatal tipping point, imperiling fisheries and tourism-dependent economies of many developing nations, a study said.

Researchers warn in the latest edition of the journal Science that rising global temperatures and increasing carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere may cause irreversible damage from mass coral bleaching, disease and mortality. With declining water quality and over-fishing, reefs are moving ``toward the tipping point of functional collapse,'' the study said.

The beauty of coral reefs will likely ``fundamentally alter'' as a result of climate change and ocean acidification, a shift that will be particularly devastating to poor coastal countries, researchers said.

``Under-resourced and developing countries have the lowest capacity to respond to climate change, but many have tourism as their sole income earner and thus are at risk economically if their coral reefs deteriorate,'' said researchers, who based their analysis on climate scenarios laid out by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Reefs may turn into ``rapidly eroding rubble banks'' like what has been seen in some inshore regions of the Great Barrier Reef, where coral populations have disappeared during the past 50 to 100 years.