Oz Researchers - No Way GBR Mass Bleaching Caused By Anything But Anthropogenic Warming
This year, we’ve seen alarming bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef, caused by warm sea temperatures. A recently completed aerial survey of the reef found that 93 percent of the smaller reefs that comprise it showed at least some bleaching, and in the northern sector of the reef, the large majority of reefs saw bleaching that was severe — meaning many of these corals could die.
There was already considerable murmuring that this event, which damages a famous World Heritage site and could deal a blow to a highly valuable tourism industry, did not simply happen by chance. And now, a near real-time analysis by a group of Australian climate and coral reef researchers has affirmed that the extremely warm March sea temperatures in the Coral Sea, which are responsible for the event, were hardly “natural.”
“Human caused climate change made the extreme ocean temperatures that led to the massive bleaching events along the Great Barrier Reef this year at least 175 times more likely,” finds the analysis, which was led by Andrew King, a researcher studying climate extremes at the University of Melbourne.
King and his four colleagues freely confess that their analysis has not yet been peer-reviewed — science doesn’t move that fast — and admit to adopting the “unusual approach of releasing the results before publication.” But they defend the move in light of the situation.
EDIT
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/04/29/scientists-say-theres-basically-no-way-the-great-barrier-reef-was-bleached-naturally/
