coral bleaching

Coral bleaching could cost $1b in lost tourism

The Australia Institute has warned that continued coral bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef could lead to plummet in international visitors to the region by more than a million a year. The massive drop in visitors would result in the loss of $1 billion in tourism income and up to 10,000 jobs.

The institute surveyed 3000 Chinese, US and British visitors. The Great Barrier Reef is Australia’s top tourist attraction, but more than one-third of Americans, 55% of Chinese and 27% of British visitors surveyed said they would holiday elsewhere if the reef died completely.

Scientists fear severe coral bleaching could return to Great Barrier Reef

Severe coral bleaching could return to the Great Barrier Reef in the next four weeks scientists warn, after new bleaching and unusually high ocean temperatures have been documented.

Newly bleached corals have been discovered near Townsville.

Vast swathes of the Great Barrier Reef have been placed on Alert Level 1 by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Coral Reef Watch for the next four weeks — meaning that coral bleaching is likely.

February temperature spike bombshell

NASA dropped a bombshell of a climate report on March 11. February 2016 has soared past all rivals as the warmest seasonally adjusted month in more than a century of global recordkeeping. NASA's analysis showed that February ran 1.35°C above the 1951-1980 global average for the month, as can be seen in the graph of monthly anomalies going back to 1880.