400-year Record Heat Threat to Great Barrier Reef
Kayleigh Reilly
News Article: Climate change: Coral
samples show Great Barrier Reef ‘in danger’
Scientific Article: Highest ocean heat in
four centuries places Great Barrier Reef in danger | Nature
Background
Coral
reefs cover only 1% of the world’s oceans but are home to more than 25% of the
world’s marine life.1 Along with housing a significant number of
marine life they provide many other benefits including protecting shorelines,
assisting in building beaches, supporting jobs and businesses through tourism
and recreation, and providing food for coastal and inland communities.1 Unfortunately
due to warmer water temperatures among other factors coral has been experiencing
a phenomena known as bleaching.2 Bleaching is caused when coral becomes
stressed, usually a result caused by changes in living conditions such as
temperature, light, and nutrients.2 Coral exists in a symbiotic
relationship with algae, and when stressed the algae will leave the coral resulting
it to become bleached and highly susceptible to disease.2
Peer Reviewed Article
The
scientific article I have chosen specifically addresses the warming of oceans and
the direct impact it has on the Great Barrier Reef (GBR). The article first
addresses the frequency and severity of mass bleaching events. Stress bands in
coral are an indicator for bleaching incidents in the past, and with this
information researchers were able to determine that mass bleaching did not occur
in the 1800s and most of the 1900s (evidence shows El Niño caused bleaching to
occur).3 However since the beginning of the 21st century,
the frequency and severity of these events has dramatically increased which is heavily
correlated with warming ocean waters.3 Between 2016 and 2024 there
were five separate mass bleaching events that occurred on the GBR alone driven
by high sea surface temperatures (SST).3 January-March Coral Sea heat extremes
during 2017, 2020, and 2024 were the warmest in 400 years, and climate model scientists
show that it is extremely likely that human influence is the main driver.4
The
methods of this study are split into three types: instrumentation measuring SSTs
between 1900-present, modeling of SST’s between 1618-present, and assessment of
anthropogenic influence. Recent data collected (ERSSTv5, Extended Reconstructed
Sea Surface Temperature dataset) correlates high SST averages with GBR mass
bleaching events, as can be seen in figure 1.3
Figure 1: a–e, SSTAs (using ERSSTv5 data) for
January–March in the Australasian region relative to the 1961–90 average for
the five recent GBR mass coral bleaching years: 2016, 2017, 2020, 2022 and
2024. The black box shows the Coral Sea region (4° S–26° S, 142°E–174° E). f, Coral Sea and GBR mean SSTAs for 1900–2024 in
January–March relative to the 1961–90 average. The black vertical lines
indicate the five recent GBR mass coral bleaching years.
SST data between 1618-1995 has been reconstructed using
modeling analyses calibrated to ERSSTv5 dataset. The reconstruction method
itself is quite complicated and is kept in the SI most likely to reduce confusion
and keep to the main point of the paper. Main findings from reconstruction show
that SST variability occurred in the past but with relative stability before
the 1900s.3 Warming can be
seen since the early 1900s with the onset of the Industrial era.3 Figure
2 shows average SSTs combining both the reconstructed data and instrumental
data for the years 1618-2024.3 Using model simulations from Coupled
Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6) research was conducted to determine human
influence on Jan-Mar SST averages in the Coral Sea. The ultimate conclusions
from this particular study were that anthropogenic impacts on the climate are
virtually certain to be the primary driver of long-term warming in the Coral
Sea.3
Figure 2: Ranked January–March SSTAs for 1618–2024
relative to 1961–90 (colored circles) from the best-estimate (highest skill,
full coral network) reconstruction (1618–1899) and instrumental (ERSSTv5) data
(1900–2024). The year is indicated by the color of the filled circles. The
5th–95th-percentile uncertainty bounds of the pre-1900 reconstructed
SSTAs are shown by small grey dots. The year labels indicate the warmest
six years on record, five of which were mass coral bleaching years on
the GBR. The pink (upper) dashed line indicates the 95th-percentile uncertainty
bound of the maximum pre-1900 reconstructed SSTA; the red (lower) dashed line
indicates the 90th-percentile limit.
News Article
The news article that I have chosen
to talk about today is a BBC article. The title of the article itself is very
similar to the research one and conveys very clearly what the topic of the
article will be about and maybe is even less click-batey than the actual scientific
article. My main take-aways from the research was that more bleach events are occurring,
and the oceans are becoming warmer due to anthropogenic influence. The news
article does a very good job of summarizing these main points, but I felt like
it maybe could have included some more specific statistics, especially that
2024 was the highest the avg SST had been in 400 years. They also include an
interesting picture of how they core the coral to study past bleaching events.5
I also appreciate the clearly outlined call to action and next steps with
regards to where the findings of the study could go.5 They provide
some hope for limiting the damage to the coral which I personally believe is
helpful for convincing people to actively put change into place.
I’m not
super happy with how long they take to explain bleaching. If you don’t already
have an idea of bleaching and its affects you could potentially be lost until
the very end of the article. They describe coring before even explaining the
symbiotic relationship of algae and coral or bleaching, which is what they are
studying when they look at the cores. They
also never link the warming of the oceans to human influence. They mention climate
change but never directly say that it’s because of anthropogenic sources. Considering
all these conclusions I would rate this news article a 7/10.
Citations
(1) National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The Importance of Coral Reefs –
Corals: NOAA’s National Ocean Service Education. oceanservice.noaa.gov. https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/education/tutorial_corals/coral07_importance.html
(2) National
Ocean Service. What Is Coral bleaching? Noaa.gov. https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/coral_bleach.html.
(3) Henley,
B.J., McGregor, H.V., King, A.D. et al. Highest ocean heat in
four centuries places Great Barrier Reef in danger. Nature 632,
320–326 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-07672-x
(4) IPCC. Climate
Change 2021 Working Group I Contribution to the Sixth Assessment Report of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change; IPCC, 2021. https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_WGI_SPM_final.pdf.
(5) Gill,
V. Climate change: Coral samples show Great Barrier Reef “in danger.” Bbc.com.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy0ngx130kxo
(accessed 2024-08-08).
Great job on your analysis and summary! The biggest thing that stood out to me from the bbc article besides the points you addressed where how it never addressed the ecological impact that mass coral bleaching would have. Although not central to the take aways from the paper, I think that it could have been impactful to include for readers to further understand why carol bleaching is so disastrous. The paper as well as your summary included a quick sentence capturing this, and I think that the article could have done the same.
ReplyDeleteI also agree with your critiques about the article's delay in explaining coral bleaching and their lack of specific statistics. I agree that explaining coring by saying they provide "chemical cues" without explaining that bleaching leads to stress bands that are said cues that provide evidence to the coral's environment could leave readers confused and makes the article not flow very well. Nonetheless, I think that it got the message most important points across to the reader accurately and ultimately brought awareness to the issues with a call to action, so I think that I would consider raising the rating to a 8/10.
Hi Fernanda thanks for your comment! I agree that the news article should have included more of a bigger picture impact. I think especially with something like coral reefs, where people might not understand the devastating impacts that the death of coral could cause for both the oceans and ecosystem as a whole. I think even if they had just added a sentence near the end when talking about trying to get it 'endangered' status on how since it is endangered if it ended up fully dying out the effects that this would have on on the world would be impactful.
DeleteI agree with your 7/10 rating, Kayleigh. The news article did a decent job of summarizing key findings, but it did feel incomplete. I agree in that it would have benefited from providing a few pieces of specific data, or even better, a figure. While I agree that some of the methods are quite complicated, I think figure 3 (figure 2 in your post) would have added a lot. If you were to rewrite this article, how in depth do you feel would be sufficient? In other words, to what degree do you feel it is the role of scientific journalists to explain science as opposed to directing readers towards or summarizing scientific information?
ReplyDeleteHi Nate, thanks for your comment. I think incomplete is a perfect adjective to describe this news article. It really does feel like its missing some key information. To answer your question, I don't think they have to go that much more in depth. Even just adding the years where the temperature was the highest in the past 400 years, and showing something similar to figure 2 with the heat increase would improve the article significantly. I think the way they described bleaching was well-written but making this explanation earlier would make it easier to not lose the reader. To answer your last question, I think it's important to explain the basics of the science, otherwise most people won't be interested/won't understand the point of the article.
DeleteGreat article choice! Very interesting, I actually didn't know that coral could potentially recover from the bleaching until reading this, which I find to be an even greater motivation to fix the global warming crisis. I agree with your assessment of the BBC article, certainly not bad but also not the best reporting we've seen this semester. I had a couple questions for you on this. One thing I noticed is that the BBC article had many quotes from authors on the Nature paper. While I don't think this is inherently a bad thing, by word count these quotes make up almost half (~40%) of the article. To me this seemed excessive; do you think this amount of quotations took away from the article at all? Should the BBC author should take more ownership of the writing rather than relying on so many quotes? I am not sure if the BBC author led the interview of the scientists in the Nature paper, and perhaps that would make me dislike it less, but, either way, it feels more like I'm reading a transcript of an interview segment on a news station rather than reading an article about a recent scientific publication. Do you see this as a problem? And do you think the appropriate use of quotes could vary on a case-by-case basis for different journalism endeavors?
ReplyDeleteHi Sarah, thanks for commenting! I do agree that there was entirely too many quotes, it really took away from the flow of the article as a whole. I think the BBC author's should have paraphrased the interview information in their own words instead of relying on the transcripts and word-for-word writing. I do think the amount of quotations you use could vary from article-to-article. If you were writing about a specific person you would want to include more quotations for example.
DeleteGreat job with your analysis! I also found it strange that the BBC article avoided saying the warming was due to anthropogenic sources, even though the nature paper itself explicitly states “Anthropogenic impacts on the climate are virtually certain to be the primary driver of this long-term warming in the Coral Sea”. With as assertive language as the authors of the nature paper used to describe the human impact on coral bleaching, one would think the BBC article might mention it too. Do you have ideas why the news article would avoid linking this research explicitly to anthropogenic sources?
ReplyDeleteHi Sam, thanks for commenting. Unfortunately, I think that we still live in a world where there are climate change deniers (not caused by human sources) and therefore if they had explicitly stated this connection then they may have lost some people. I think they are really trying to push for endangered status and they will probably be more likely to push for this if they don't say that its caused by humans.
DeleteI agree with your 7/10 rating on this article, Kayleigh. I think the article would have greatly benefited from a call to action. It explicitly describes the correlation between climate change and coral bleaching, identifying the primary cause of bleaching as anthropogenic. Additionally, since coral has the capacity to recover from bleaching, a call to action becomes even more important. The way Gill ends the BBC article feels like, “It’s out of our hands,” but for something so important, it should encourage readers to become informed and engaged in addressing the issue, rather than leaving it to fate or government intervention alone. Why do you think the author chose not to include a call to action?
ReplyDeleteHi Holly thanks for your comment. I actually slightly disagree. I think they did include a call to action. They are trying to push for endangered status on the coral as their call to action and even say that while the coral will be changed by these mass bleaching events they can still be saved. I agree maybe could have been more clear but it is there.
DeleteI agree with your 7/10 rating. I really like the images used in the BBC article. I think they really drive home the situation -- the coal reefs are in bad shape. I'm pleased that the author mentioned that coral are animals. I think it's a really interesting fact. If there was a word limit, though, I think this should have been cut so that other information could be included. Specifically, I wish they gave a broader perspective on the impacts losing coral reefs would have. Do you think this would be beneficial? If so, do you think it should be told from an ecological perspective, an economic perspective, or both?
ReplyDeleteI agree that the lack of statistics is disappointing. Giving people clear messaging can involve numbers without having them get lost in the details.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if this pitfall was because of time constraints. It looks like this news article was posted the same day the nature article was published, when the university didn't give even give coverage until the next day.
I understand wanting to be the first to cover this, but do you think that rushing led to a lackluster story being published? Would more time result in better understanding of this somewhat dense nature article and thus a stronger message to deliver to a lay audience?
I like your 7/10 rating. The pictures in the article were pretty, but they greatly underestimate the public's ability to read any data or figures, which does them a great disservice. The nature cover would be greatly improved by using an actual figure. However, I think selecting which figure to use is crucial. Figure 1 A-E would be great to show readers, as it is simple and clear. I think Figure 2 takes too long to make clear interpretations. I don't like the false second y-axis on the right hand of Figure 2, as from my perspective it muddies the point of the figure. If that figure were shown to a non-scientifically literate audience, they might lose interest or miss the point. Why might the author have chosen to display the journal cover rather than it's contents?
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree with your rating. The news article is interesting because the scientists being interviewed are pushing this anthropogenic climate change angle, but the author of the news article is much more focused on the general marine science behind coral reefs and studies being done on them. The whole article is so short and almost abrupt in its transitions, and I think ending with the discussion of the reef as a world heritage site is kind of strange, even if they do connect it back to the coral bleaching by mentioning that the hope is that studies like this will get it reclassified as endangered.
ReplyDelete