The first global mass bleaching event

Assembled from 61 blocks · 1 evidence · 37 related

1. Story
2. Bleaching occurred simultaneously across every major reef region during and after the very strong 1997-98 El Nino, the first time the phenomenon had been observed at global scale rather than as a set of local events. The widely cited assessment published in 2000 estimated that around sixteen per cent of the world's reef-building corals died. Losses were extremely uneven: parts of the western Indian Ocean, including the Maldives and the Seychelles, lost the great majority of their shallow coral, while other regions came through with modest damage. The event established both that bleaching was a global phenomenon and that the ocean's heat, not any local pressure, was the agent.
3. Knowledge
4. Reef-building corals (Scleractinia)
5. Zooxanthellae (Symbiodiniaceae)
6. Coral bleaching
7. The first global mass bleaching event
8. Mass bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef
9. El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO)
10. Connections
11. El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO)
12. Coral bleaching
13. Mass bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef
14. Reef-building corals (Scleractinia)
15. Zooxanthellae (Symbiodiniaceae)
16. The first global mass bleaching event
17. The second global bleaching event
18. Mass bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef during a La Nina
19. Peruvian Anchoveta (Engraulis ringens)
20. Coastal and Equatorial Upwelling
21. El Niño Advisory in effect at the July 2026 CPC discussion
22. Reef-building corals (Scleractinia)
23. Marine heatwave
24. Degree Heating Weeks (DHW)
25. Symbiont shuffling and thermal tolerance
26. The first global mass bleaching event
27. A published projection that reefs would bleach faster than they could recover
28. The second global bleaching event
29. The third global bleaching event
30. Mass bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef
31. A second consecutive year of mass bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef
32. The interval between severe bleaching events is measured, and it has collapsed
33. Mass bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef during a La Nina
34. The fourth global bleaching event is confirmed
35. The fifth mass bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef since 2016
36. The current state of the fourth global bleaching event is not established in this package
37. The first global mass bleaching event
38. Great Barrier Reef
39. A second consecutive year of mass bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef
40. Coral bleaching
41. Reef-building corals (Scleractinia)
42. Australian Institute of Marine Science
43. Global warming and recurrent mass bleaching of corals
44. Marine heatwave
45. Zooxanthellae (Symbiodiniaceae)
46. Zooxanthellae (Symbiodiniaceae)
47. Coral bleaching
48. Crown-of-thorns starfish (Acanthaster)
49. Elkhorn coral (Acropora palmata)
50. Darwin publishes The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs
51. The first global mass bleaching event
52. A published projection that reefs would bleach faster than they could recover
53. Mass bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef
54. The interval between severe bleaching events is measured, and it has collapsed
55. Reef-building corals (Scleractinia)
56. Reef-building corals (Scleractinia)
57. Coral calcification
58. The first global mass bleaching event
59. The coral symbionts are reclassified into a family of genera
60. Evidence
61. Around sixteen per cent of the world's reef-building corals died in the 1998 global bleaching event, with losses very unevenly distributed and most severe in the western Indian Ocean. V55 verification basis: not consulted; the sixteen per cent figure is the widely repeated headline of this report and is stated from the producing model's knowledge, not read from the report. The regional breakdown behind it was not checked.