Healthy coral riffs in the Maldives (2013). Picture: Wikimedia Commons.
Marine heatwaves can irreversibly damage ecosystems and, therefore, also present a threat to fishing. As a team led by physicist Thomas Frölicher from Bern showed in a study just published , the number of marine heatwaves has increased dramatically in past decades. This trend will further intensify as a result of climate change. Submarine pictures of coral reefs that have lost all of their bright colours have become iconic for the consequences of climate change. Just like the shrinking Alpine glaciers. The corals on the Australian Great Barrier Reef, for example, are an ecosystem that reacts very sensitively to marine heatwaves. Marine heatwaves are phases during which the sea-surface temperatures are much higher than usual.
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