World's oceans have gone 'crazy haywire,' officials warn, with majority of coral reefs in peril
World's oceans have gone 'crazy haywire,' officials warn, with majority of coral reefs in peril
Conditions last year were so unusually warm in some waters that heat stress levels were literally off the charts of NOAA's alert system.
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Corals respond by expelling tiny photosynthetic algae that live in their tissues, causing the normally colorful marine invertebrates to turn ghostly white.
The current threats come on the heels of record-shattering marine heat waves that hit most of the world’s ocean basins last year.
Manzello said that conditions last year were so unusually warm in parts of the Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico that heat stress levels were literally off the charts of NOAA’s existing alert system.
The agency’s updated bleaching alert system, introduced in December, categorizes heat stress on a scale of severity from 1 to 5.
The impacts have been widespread, Manzello said: Bleaching “has occurred in at least 62 countries and territories since February 2023, spanning both the northern and southern hemispheres of all ocean basins.”
El Niño events are characterized by warmer-than-usual sea surface temperatures and tend to exacerbate background warming from climate change.
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