麻豆传媒

It鈥檚 a catastrophe for coral reefs. Sea surface temperatures are so high across much of the tropics that many reefs will suffer severe bleaching for an unprecedented fourth year in a row. Divers in Australia are already reporting new bleaching in the northern part of the Great Barrier Reef, where last year half of corals in the聽worst-hit areas died.

Corals bleach聽鈥� and can die聽鈥� when stresses such as abnormal heat make them expel their symbiotic algae. The ongoing global bleaching is the longest and most widespread ever known.

It began in 2014, when global warming and a developing El Ni帽o heated seas. During El Ni帽os, changes in trade winds spread warm surface waters across the Pacific Ocean. The bleaching became the worst on record when the strong El Ni帽o of 2015 and 2016 hit.

The 2015/16 El Ni帽o was followed by a La Ni帽a, which cools sea surfaces by bringing up deeper waters. But surface waters remain so warm that NOAA鈥檚 is now predicting that many reefs will bleach in the next three months despite the recent La Ni帽a conditions.

While , not everyone agrees. 鈥淏leaching occurs in summer, and is not 鈥榗ontinuous鈥�,鈥� says Terry Hughes of James Cook University in Australia, whose helicopter survey last year documented the extensive bleaching in the Great Barrier Reef.

But whether it鈥檚 one event or a series of events, it is still bad news. It takes around a decade for an undisturbed reef to recover from bleaching, says Gareth Williams of Bangor University in the UK. So if bleaching occurs more often, reefs don鈥檛 have time to recover.

A suggests that most reefs will suffer annual bleaching by the 2040s. 鈥淭he projections are terrifying,鈥� he says.

Read more: Face-to-face with Great Barrier Reef鈥檚 worst coral bleaching