The interval between severe bleaching events is measured, and it has collapsed
An analysis of one hundred reef locations worldwide reported that the median interval between severe bleaching events had fallen to under six years by 2016, from a return time in the early 1980s that was measured in decades. Set against the ten years or more that a fast-growing coral assemblage needs to rebuild — longer for slow-growing massive species — the finding restates the reef problem as a mismatch of two timescales rather than as a question about any one event's severity.
Observed — measured or witnessed, with the observation cited.
Subjects
- Coral bleaching · ecological phenomenon · Global tropical reefs · not located
- Reef-building corals (Scleractinia) · species_group · Tropical and subtropical shallow seas, broadly 30 degrees N to 30 degrees S · not located
Evidence
Partly verified — Core facts are sourced; some optional detail is deliberately absent.
Spatial and temporal patterns of mass bleaching of corals in the Anthropocene
The median return time between severe bleaching events at reef locations worldwide has fallen to under six years, from intervals measured in decades in the early 1980s. V55 verification basis: not consulted; the return-time result is stated from the producing model's knowledge of this paper, and the value is given as "under six years" rather than to a decimal place.
Science (AAAS), Hughes and colleagues · 2018 · Partly verified
Hughes, T.P. et al. (2018), Science vol. 359 — bleaching histories of one hundred reef locations worldwide since 1980.
Recorded on Coral bleaching
- Darwin publishes The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs
- The first global mass bleaching event
- A published projection that reefs would bleach faster than they could recover
- The third global bleaching event
- Mass bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef
- A second consecutive year of mass bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef
- The interval between severe bleaching events is measured, and it has collapsed
- The fourth global bleaching event is confirmed
Related
Related because they share a subject in the Atlas — never because the text looks similar.
- The fourth global bleaching event is confirmed · 2024-04
- A second consecutive year of mass bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef · 2017
- Mass bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef · 2016-03 to 2016-04
- The third global bleaching event · 2014–2017
- A published projection that reefs would bleach faster than they could recover · 1999
- The first global mass bleaching event · 1998
- Darwin publishes The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs · 1842