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 Record ocean temperatures are putting coral reefs at risk, causing a third-ever global coral bleaching effect, NOAA reported this week. The effects of global warming, which are heightened by the current El Nino effect, have exposed about 95 percent of U.S. coral reefs to conditions that cause coral bleaching, which can lead the coral to die off. 
 
 The effect has been visible across a wide area of the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, NOAA reported. 
 
 Global Warming Blamed For Pacific Coral Bleaching 
 
 “The coral bleaching and disease ... are the largest and most pervasive threats to coral reefs around the world,” said Mark Eakin, NOAA’s Coral Reef Watch coordinator. 
 
 “As a result, we are losing huge areas of coral across the U.S., as well as internationally. What really has us concerned is this event has been going on for more than a year and our preliminary model projections indicate it’s likely to last well into 2016.” 
 
 Coral bleaching happens when high temperatures cause the coral to expel symbiotic algae, which gives the coral its color. Short-term bleaching events occur naturally and the coral can recover. 
 
 VIDEO: The Ocean Is In Danger! 
 
 Long-term events, like the one NOAA scientists are observing, cause coral to lose its primary food source and expose it to disease. 
 
 The current event follows bleaching in 2014 that widely affected reefs in the main Hawaiian Islands. 
 
 “Last year’s bleaching at Lisianski Atoll was the worst our scientists have seen,” said Randy Kosaki, NOAA’s deputy superintendent for the monument. “Almost one and a half square miles of reef bleached last year and are now completely dead.” 
 
 Global bleaching first occurred in 1998, during a record El Nino, and a second bleaching event happend in 2010. ||||| 
 
 A before and after image of the bleaching in American Samoa. The first image was taken in December 2014. The second image was taken in February 2015 when the XL Catlin Seaview Survey responded to a NOAA coral bleaching alert. (Credit: XL Catlin Seaview Survey) 
 
 For just the third time on record, scientists say they are now watching the unfolding of a massive worldwide coral bleaching event, spanning the globe from Hawaii to the Indian Ocean. And they fear that thanks to warm sea temperatures, the ultimate result could be the loss of more than 12,000 square kilometers, or over 4,500 square miles, of coral this year — with particularly strong impacts in Hawaii and other U.S. tropical regions, and potentially continuing into 2016. 
 
 The event is being brought on by a combination of global warming, a very strong El Nino event, and the so-called warm “blob” in the Pacific Ocean, say the researchers, part of a consortium including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration as well as XL Catlin Seaview Survey, The University of Queensland in Australia, and Reef Check. 
 
 “This is only the third time we’ve seen what we would refer to as a global bleaching event, an event that causes mass bleaching in the Indian Ocean, the Pacific Ocean, and the Atlantic-Caribbean basin,” said Mark Eakin, who heads NOAA’s Coral Reef Watch. The prior events, Eakin continues, “were in 1998 and 2010, and those were pretty much one year events. We’re looking at a similar spatial scale of bleaching across the globe, but spanning across at least 2 years. So that means a lot of these corals are being put under really prolonged stress, or are being hit 2 years in a row.” 
 
 The total loss could amount to 5 percent of the world’s corals in 2015, according to Eakin. That’s not as bad as the loss in 1998, but there’s a fear that if the event continues into 2016, the losses would grow. 
 
 “We’ve been hearing worrying reports of bleaching from various places, and now the bad news is officially here, with worse news likely yet to come with the strengthening El Nino,” says Nancy Knowlton, an expert on coral reefs with the Smithsonian Institution, of the news. “No reefs that experience unusually warm waters are likely to escape unscathed, but reefs already suffering from overfishing and pollution may have a particularly rough time recovering, based on what we have learned from past bleaching events.” 
 
 [The Pacific Ocean may have entered a new warm phase — and the consequences could be dramatic] 
 
 Coral bleaching occurs when warm ocean waters — considerably warmer than corals evolved to live with for an extended period of time — leave the organisms stressed and cause them to banish the symbiotic algae that provide corals with both their color and also nutrients. Without them, corals turn white, and become very vulnerable — thus, following bleaching, coral die-off can occur. How much coral death happens depends on how much temperature stress the corals actually experience, and how prolonged it is. 
 
 In this video from NOAA's National Ocean Service, scientists explain the pressures on corals caused by climate change, and what we can do about it. (National Ocean Service/NOAA) 
 
 The current bleaching event began in 2014, where it was observed in Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands. These areas experienced “the highest thermal stress we’ve ever seen,” said Eakin. Then it spread across the Pacific to Hawaii, which is at particular risk right now, along with many areas in the Caribbean. Major bleaching has also been observed in the Indian Ocean. 
 
 [A mysterious illness is turning starfish into goo] 
 
 According to NOAA, 95 percent of all U.S. coral reefs are expected to see ocean temperatures that can lead to bleaching sometime this year. Of those areas, says Eakin, 60 percent are expected to be “hit with severe thermal stress and we’re going to see a lot of corals dying.” 
 
 NOAA models predicted the global bleaching event during the summer — further confirmation came from observations in the field by organizations like the XL Catlin Seaview Survey, which organizes expeditions around the world to observe the state of corals, and Reef Check, which coordinates and crowd-sources citizen scientist reports from reef areas. 
 
 
 
 Alice Lawrence, a marine biologist, assesses the bleaching at Airport Reef in American Samoa. (Credit: XL Catlin Seaview Survey) 
 
 The first globally observed coral bleaching event occurred in 1998, during the last very strong El Nino event — when it happened, scientists had never seen anything like it. 
 
 “This 1998 event caught us all by surprise,” says Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, who directs the Global Change Institute at the University of Queensland and is also chief scientist at the XL Catlin Seaview Survey. At the same time, though, the event “really proved that the ability to measure temperature from space could predict where and when bleaching was going to occur, and as we found out later on, how intense it was going to be.” That’s because the phenomenon of coral bleaching is so closely connected to temperature. 
 
 Indeed, because of this relationship, scientists can now use computer models to predict coral bleaching events ahead of time. “If you’re 1 degree [Celsius] warmer than your long term summer temperature for about 4 to 6 weeks, you’ll find the first sign of bleaching,” says Hoegh-Guldberg. 
 
 Coral reefs comprise less than .1 percent of the ocean’s total area. But they’re vitally important both to ecosystems and to people who depend on them. “One in every four species of fish live on a coral reef, there are over a million species that live on coral reefs, at least two-thirds of them are pretty unknown to science,” says Hoegh-Guldberg. “Coral reefs provide food and livelihood to 500 million people.” 
 
 [Before we damage the oceans any further, it would be nice to know what actually lives there] 
 
 “Coral reefs are the underwater equivalent of rainforests, and by removing the corals, you remove the trees of that underwater world,” adds Richard Vevers, head of the XL Catlin Seaview Survey. 
 
 
 
 A long-nose file fish struggling to find coral polys to eat. File fish are iconic reef fish that are totally reliant on healthy corals for food. (Credit: XL Catlin Seaview Survey) 
 
 Unfortunately, as the planet’s oceans continue to absorb the bulk of the extra heat that is being contributed by global warming, the outlook for corals isn’t good. Already half of the world’s reefs have already been lost due to causes ranging from bleaching to pollution in the last 50 years, according to Eakin. 
 
 And a staccato of scientific studies have predicted continual decline of corals as warming ticks upward, one of them led by Hoegh-Guldberg in 2007. That report found that over the course of this century, as warming continues, “corals becoming increasingly rare on reef systems.” 
 
 And once corals die, the consequences are not easily reversible. “At best, you’re talking about a recovery time of 10 to 20 years,” says NOAA’s Eakin. “And most of these places are getting hit once every 5 years.” Some of the corals killed off can be several hundred years old. 
 
 One estimate valued the U.S.’s coral reefs alone at $ 2.4 billion per year, when taking into account the tourism and other economic benefits they provide. 
 
 “Local protection coupled with more serious efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions are needed if we want coral reefs to be part of our future,” says the Smithsonian’s Knowlton. 
 
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 For more, you can sign up for our weekly newsletter here, and follow us on Twitter here. ||||| Scientists have confirmed the third-ever global bleaching of coral reefs is under way and warned it could see the biggest coral die-off in history. 
 
 Since 2014, a massive underwater heatwave, driven by climate change, has caused corals to lose their brilliance and die in every ocean. By the end of this year 38% of the world’s reefs will have been affected. About 5% will have died forever. 
 
 But with a very strong El Niño driving record global temperatures and a huge patch of hot water, known as “the Blob”, hanging obstinately in the north-western Pacific, things look far worse again for 2016. 
 
 Coral reefs worth four times as much as UK economy, 'Earth Index' finds Read more 
 
 For coral scientists such as Dr Mark Eakin, the coordinator of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Coral Reef Watch programme, this is the cataclysm that has been feared since the first global bleaching occurred in 1998 . 
 
 “The fact that 2016’s bleaching will be added on top of the bleaching that has occurred since June 2014 makes me really worried about what the cumulative impact may be. It very well may be the worst period of coral bleaching we’ve seen,” he told the Guardian. 
 
 The only two previous such global events were in 1998 and 2010, when every major ocean basin experienced bleaching. 
 
 Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, director of the Global Change Institute at the University of Queensland, Australia, said the ocean was now primed for “the worst coral bleaching event in history”. 
 
 “The development of conditions in the Pacific looks exactly like what happened in 1997. And of course following 1997 we had this extremely warm year, with damage occurring in 50 countries at least and 16% of corals dying by the end of it,” he said. “Many of us think this will exceed the damage that was done in 1998.” 
 
 The global bleaching event sea surface temperature anomaly, April 2014 to October 2015. Last two slides are prediction for Oct-Jan 2016 and Feb-May 2016. via GIPHY 
 
 After widespread devastation was confirmed in the Caribbean this month, a worldwide consortium of coral scientists joined on Thursday to sombrely announce the third-ever global bleaching event – and warn of a tenuous future for the precious habitat unless sharp cuts were made to carbon emissions. 
 
 Since the early 1980s the world has lost roughly a fifth of its coral reefs. Hoegh-Guldberg said the current event was directly in line with predictions he made in 1999 that continued global temperature rise would lead to the complete loss of coral reefs by the middle of this century. 
 
 “It’s certainly on that road to a point about 2030 when every year is a bleaching year … So unfortunately I got it right,” he said. 
 
 Hoegh-Guldberg said he had personally observed the first signs of bleaching on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef in the past fortnight, months before the warm season begins. He said the warming pattern indicated bleaching this summer would likely affect 50% of the reef, leaving 5-10% of corals dead. Eakin said seeing bleaching on the reef at this time of year was “disturbing”. 
 
 “We are going to have to double our efforts to reduce the other threats to the reef,” said Hoegh-Guldberg of the icon that Unesco has considered listing as World Heritage in Danger, due to the threats of a mooted coal port expansion, agricultural run-off and climate change. “It’s like a hospital patient. If you’ve got a chronic disease then you are more sensitive to a lot of other things and if you want a recovery then you need to take all those other stresses off.” 
 
 The difference between this bleaching event and others before it is not just the extremity of sea temperatures, but how long they have persisted for. Corals can recover from bleaching if the temperature relents. But after a month or more the organisms that build these brilliantly coloured underwater cities die. 
 
 “This is not only a big event, but it’s more persistent than any of our past ones, including 1998,” said Eakin. In many areas the bleaching has now lasted far longer than the threshold month and in Hawaii, Guam, Kiribati and Florida there has been back-to-back bleaching events across the past two years. 
 
 The progression of bleaching from healthy to dead on a reef in American Samoa this year. Courtesy of : XL Catlin Seaview Survey 
 
 Like rainforests on land, coral reefs are home to a riot of biodiversity. On just 0.1% of the ocean’s floor they nurture 25% of the world’s marine species. The impact of losing this would be devastating for the 500 million people who rely on coral ecosystems for their food and livelihood. These effects would not be felt immediately, but over the coming years as fish species move on or die off. 
 
 “It really does affect things like tourism and fishing,” said Hoegh-Guldberg. However, he said there was still hope, if governments acted immediately to relieve both global and local pressures on reefs. 
 
 “If we were to take strong action on the emission issue and we were to take strong action on the non-climate issues such as overfishing and pollution, reefs would rebound by mid to late century,” he said. 
 
 Note: The article was changed to say that one fifth of the world’s reefs had been lost. The original said one half.
– A coral bleaching event is hitting the globe for just the third time on record, scientists say, and could lead to the biggest coral die-off in history, reports the Guardian. We could lose about 5% of the planet's corals (or 4,500 square miles) this year, while 38% may be affected. Similar events in 1998 and 2010 each lasted a year, but this event—caused by warming oceans as a result of global warming, El Nino, and a warm "blob" in the Pacific Ocean—started last year and is likely to last into 2016, putting corals "under really prolonged stress," says NOAA researcher Mark Eakin, per the Washington Post and Discovery News. When stressed, corals lose the symbiotic algae that provide color and thus turn white. They can recover, but death often follows long-term events. About 95% of US coral reefs will encounter temperatures that can cause bleaching this year, while 60% are likely to be "hit with severe thermal stress," says Eakin. "We've been hearing worrying reports of bleaching from various places … with worse news likely yet to come with the strengthening El Nino," a coral expert from the Smithsonian Institution tells the Post. A University of Queensland scientist expects a bleaching event to occur every year by 2030. "Coral reefs are the underwater equivalent of rainforests, and by removing the corals, you remove the trees of that underwater world," adds another expert. About 500 million people rely on reefs for food or their livelihood. (In better news, researchers found a massive new reef in Australia.)