Climate Geoenginering May be the Only Way to Save Coral Reefs from Warming Seas

Climate engineering may just save coral reefs. Scientists have found that since reefs are one of the most vulnerable ecosystems to future climate change, geoengineering will be crucial to saving them.

Coral reefs are largely at risk due to mass bleaching. Bleaching occurs when sea surface temperatures are too warm, which causes the coral to eject their zooxanthellae. Because zooxanthellae help the corals use photosynthesis to process sunlight into food, without them the corals eventually starve. While corals can recover their zooxanthellae when temperatures cool, too many warm days in a row can kill corals.

Unfortunately, researchers believe that even under the most ambitious future CO2 reduction scenarios, widespread and severe coral bleaching and degradation will occur by the middle of the century. Fortunately, researches have an answer.

Scientists have suggested that a geoengineering technique called Solar Radiation Management (SRM) reduces the risk of global severe bleaching. The SRM method involves injecting gas into the stratosphere, forming microscopic particles that reflect some of the sun's energy and so help limit rising sea surface temperatures.

"Our work highlights the sort of climate scenarios that now need to be considered if the protection of coral reefs is a priority," said Lester Kwiatkowski, the lead author of the new study, in a news release.

The findings reveal the very different impacts on coral bleaching of different measures to tackle climate change. These methods are especially important to note as temperatures continue to rise.

"Coral reefs face a dire situation regardless of how intensively society decarbonizes the economy," said Peter Cox, co-author of the new study. "In reality there is no direct choice between conventional mitigation and climate engineering but this study shows that we need to either accept that the loss of a large percentage of the world's reefs is inevitable or star thinking beyond conventional mitigation of CO2 emissions."

The findings are published in the journal Nature Climate Change.

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