Climate change drove coral reefs to a total ecosystem collapse
lasting thousands of years, according to a paper published this
week in Science. The paper shows how natural climatic shifts
stopped reef growth in the eastern Pacific for 2,500 years. The
reef shutdown, which began 4,000 years ago, corresponds to a
period of dramatic swings in the El Niño-Southern Oscillation
(ENSO). “As humans continue to pump greenhouse gases into the
atmosphere, the climate is once again on the threshold of a new
regime, with dire consequences for reef ecosystems unless we get
control of climate change,” said coauthor Richard Aronson, a
biology professor at Florida Institute of Technology. With
atmospheric and oceanic CO2 levels rising and the consequent
acidification of the oceans, marine life has to adapt rapidly if
they want to stay around. Especially calcium carbonate skeleton
building organisms are affected by the rapidly dwindling
seawater pH … Continue reading The decline of Caribbean coral
reefs has been linked to the