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Charles B. Jones
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Cambodian Online

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24-Aug-2005
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Welcome to Cambodia's Portal to its mystery and charm!
As you will find,
many pages are incomplete or under construction. We are however making every
effort to keep this site as timely and informative as possible and always
welcome your comments, feedback and observations.
Please enjoy what we all feel to be
one of the most amazing places on
earth...Cambodia!
Charles B. Jones
Editor
Cambodian Online
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Earth
Changes
and
Global
Warming
Home Page
Record Sea Temperatures Threaten
Great Barrier Reef
By Michael
Christie July 25, 2002
SYDNEY (Reuters) - Sea temperatures at
Australia's Great Barrier Reef last summer were the warmest on record
and this year's El Nino event means the risk of mass coral bleaching has
increased considerably, scientists reported on Thursday.
The Australian Institute of Marine Science
(AIMS) has just completed an atlas of sea temperatures over the past
decade and amalgamated it with historical data to show 2002 was the
warmest year for water temperatures off northeast Australia since 1870.
The rise in temperatures around the world's
largest living organism coincided with mass bleaching earlier this year
that affected around 60 percent of the Great Barrier Reef's 345,400
square km (133,300 square miles) of coral.
"Unless the corals can adapt and become
acclimatized then obviously the long-term future for the coral is at
risk," said AIMS oceanographer Craig Steinberg.
"The outlook isn't good. If coral can't adapt
then they're going to bleach and you get mass mortality."
The sea temperature over the last century has
risen by just half a degree Celsius.
But corals tend to live within one to two
degrees of their maximum temperature threshold and a tiny increase is
therefore enough to ensure a major impact.
Bleaching occurs when coral becomes stressed.
It involves a breakdown in the symbiotic relationship between the coral
and algae and in severe cases the coral will die.
The last time the reef's coral bleached
because of higher than normal temperatures was in 1998, when the El Nino
weather phenomenon warmed the waters of the Pacific, bringing drought to
eastern Australia and floods to parts of Latin America.
GLOBAL WARMING
Last year was not an El Nino year, making the
high temperatures even more unusual and meaning they were almost
certainly a by-product of pollution-induced global warming, said AIMS
climate expert Janice Lough.
The onset of another El Nino this year, albeit
one that U.S. experts say is likely to be mild, has increased the
chances of another southern hemisphere summer of high sea water
temperatures at the start of 2003.
"We've changed the baseline. It is a worry,"
Lough told Reuters from Townsville in the far north of Queensland state.
Coral can recover after mild bleaching.
But researchers fear that its ability to
overcome heat stress may be weakened as high temperatures become more
common.
AIMS researchers are trying to establish
whether coral has the ability to adapt quickly to changing temperatures.
There is evidence that they can over long
periods of time, but so far no indication of any short-term ability to
acclimatize.
In the meantime, there is not a lot that can
be done to protect the Great Barrier Reef -- one of Australia's main
tourist attractions and a World Heritage site.
"Reef managers can do all they can to reduce
all the other threats to coral reefs but they can't solve individually
the global problem (of climate change)," said Lough.
"It's not so much that the reef will die, it's
that the reef will change," she said. "If you sort of knock out certain
of the corals then other organisms might take their place."
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