Life bounces back

The Great Barrier Reef has had a good year. 2020 might have been the hottest or the second hottest year on record, but it was a bonanza year for reef recovery.

The reef covers 344,400 square kilometres, survived the Holocene Optimum, the Minoan warming, the Roman warming and the Medieval Warming, and is already recovering from a streak of few nasty El Ninos and a cyclone or two.

But the bottom line is that coral deaths are not easily relateable or predicted by hot weather or high CO2. If sea level changes or temperature volatility are the real culprits, the ocean currents or cloud cover may be the driver, and not the number of cars or solar panels in Australia.

As Peter Ridd has said for years: The Great Barrier Reef has about the same amount of coral as it did in 1985

Coral Cover, Northern Great Barrier Reef.

 

What a difference a few years makes. Where, here, is there any sign that either CO2 or high temperatures is a problem?

Coral Cover, Central Great Barrier Reef.

 

The trend appeared to be “all down” in 2011, but neither heat nor El […]