The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority today (10 March 2017) confirmed mass coral bleaching is occurring on the Great Barrier Reef for the second consecutive year.

Mass coral bleaching is moderate to severe bleaching over a large spatial scale — the bleaching is part of an ongoing global event affecting the world’s coral reefs since 2014.

On 9 March 2017 experts from the Marine Park Authority spent six hours flying over the Reef between Townsville and Cairns, alongside researchers from the Australian Institute of Marine Science. The first aerial survey of the Reef for 2017 found severe bleaching in offshore reefs from north of Ingham to the northern extent of the survey near Cairns. This year more bleaching is being observed in this central part of the Reef, which last year escaped widespread severe bleaching.

http://www.gbrmpa.gov.au/media-room/coral-bleaching

That's a big worry that we've now had 2 years in a row. Coral can generally regenerate after a single bleaching event, but if thy kep happening the coral will die.

lee wrote on Mar 13^th, 2017 at 10:46am:


BoM is showing that there is a temperature anomoly of +1 degree although the pale pink in the map is hard to see because of the scale.

Try this much more high resolution map

http://www.bom.gov.au/environment/activities/reeftemp/reeftemp.shtml 

HINT: try the 14day option as this contains far more data

lee wrote on Mar 13^th, 2017 at 11:25am:


The mass bleaching event confirms the data is accurate.

The_Barnacle wrote on Mar 13^th, 2017 at 10:14am:


No. Not a big worry at all. Fake news dressed up as alarmism from the heavily discredited BOM.

*

rabbitoh08 wrote on Mar 13^th, 2017 at 4:38pm:



You do know sub-surface merely means below the surface? The 150m that BoM refers to is simply the depth at which they measure, to ensure conformity.

Now if wiki is to be believed -

"Sea surface temperature (SST) is the water temperature close to the ocean's surface. The exact meaning of surface varies according to the measurement method used, but it is between 1 millimetre (0.04 in) and 20 metres (70 ft) below the sea surface."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_surface_temperature

The_Barnacle wrote on Mar 14^th, 2017 at 9:23am:



Oh, dear. I omitted a piece from wiki-

"There are several difficulties with satellite-based absolute SST measurements. First, in infrared remote sensing methodology the radiation emanates from the top "skin" of the ocean, approximately the top 0.01 mm or less, which may not represent the bulk temperature of the upper meter of ocean due primarily to effects of solar surface heating during the daytime, reflected radiation, as well as sensible heat loss and surface evaporation."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_surface_temperature

So you see it is a true measure of Sea SURFACE Temperature and shouldn't be used to justify bleaching.

The_Barnacle wrote on Mar 14^th, 2017 at 10:55am:



You doubt SST means Sea Surface Temperature?