← Signals
Recordedyearclimate

A second consecutive year of mass bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef

Bleaching returned in 2017, this time concentrated in the central sector that had largely escaped the previous year. Back-to-back events on adjacent sectors left very little of the system untouched across the two years combined, and — the more consequential point — gave the 2016 survivors no recovery interval at all. A reef that bleaches twice in successive summers is not a reef that has been hit twice; it is a reef whose recovery process never started.

Observed — measured or witnessed, with the observation cited.

Subjects

Evidence

Partly verified — Core facts are sourced; some optional detail is deliberately absent.

Recorded on Great Barrier Reef

  1. The Great Barrier Reef is inscribed on the World Heritage List
  2. Mass synchronous spawning described on the Great Barrier Reef
  3. The Long-Term Monitoring Program begins annual reef surveys
  4. The first global mass bleaching event
  5. A published projection that reefs would bleach faster than they could recover
  6. A measured decline in Great Barrier Reef coral calcification is published
  7. Twenty-seven years of monitoring show coral cover roughly halved
  8. The third global bleaching event
  9. Mass bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef
  10. A second consecutive year of mass bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef
  11. The interval between severe bleaching events is measured, and it has collapsed
  12. The fourth global bleaching event is confirmed

Related

Related because they share a subject in the Atlas — never because the text looks similar.