University of British Columbia's Professor Simon Donner
Simon Donner says that in 30 to 50 years, if they do not adapt, we will see corals bleaching and starving dangerously frequently as the oceans warm up. “Corals, the stationary animals that build reefs, get most of their food from colourful algae which live in the coral tissue,” the University of British Columbia professor explained. “When the surrounding waters gets too hot, the corals expel the algae and lose pigmentation. If the heat stress persists, the corals can essentially starve to death.”
Donner points out that the levels of greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere today will create enough warming for this to happen by themselves – a situation he calls “committed warming”. “Even if we froze the greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere today, the climate is going to keep warming for several decades,” he says. However, talking at a conference back in February, he also looked at how corals will adapt to temperature, citing some studies showing that they can increase their temperature tolerances by as much as 1.5°C. Read the rest of this entry »
