Australia’s iconic World Heritage listed Great Barrier Reef may be irreversibly damaged by climate change in just 16 years unless immediate action is taken, scientists have warned.
A new report by Dr Selina Ward from University of Queensland highlights the potential ecological and economic damage to the reef from global warming.
Published by the World Wildlife Fund-Australia, the University of Queensland report paints a bleak picture for the future of the ecosystem.
“If we don’t increase our commitment to solve the burgeoning stress from local and global sources, the reef will disappear,” the report, prepared for Earth Hour’s upcoming annual event, states.
“This is not a hunch or alarmist rhetoric by green activists. It is the conclusion of the world’s most qualified coral reef experts.”
“One of the most important functions of the reef is as a wave barrier. That protection will be lost,” Dr Ward said.
“Without the reef, a lot of islands will be swamped,” she added.
The reef has lost about half its coral coverage since the mid-1980s, with increased carbon dioxide concentrations contributing about 10 per cent alongside damage from other sources such as invasive species and farm nutrient run-off, Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, a professor of marine science at the University of Queensland who serves as the director of the university’s Global Change Institute, told Fairfax Media.
Climate change is fast taking over as the main threat to the world’s reefs as warmer waters increase the frequency of coral bleaching, while acidifying oceans weaken or erode coral structures, Fairfax Media reported.
By 2030, on present projections for the growth of carbon dioxide emissions, conditions will be “getting close to what we understand to be some of the limits in terms of rapidly calcifying reefs”, Professor Hoegh-Guldberg said.
The Great Barrier Reef may have shrunk to 10 per cent or less of its previous coverage by 2050 if the present trajectory continues, he said.
Corals becoming too warm and dying at a much greater rate than normal cause bleaching.
Also heat-stressed corals are now more likely to succumb to disease after a bleaching event because the role of bacteria is changing.
Dr Ward referred to recent studies that have shown the erosion of the reef from acidification as more carbon dioxide is absorbed by the oceans is happening more rapidly than previously thought.
The reef’s plight will be a focus of this year’s Earth Hour to be observed in 152 nations around the world.
Australia’s conservative Liberal-National government recently approved a major expansion of the nearby Abbot Point coal point which will involve dumping three million cubic metres of dredge spoil near the reef.
Environmentalists are currently taking court action to stop the dumping.
