Journal article
The meteorological drivers of mass coral bleaching on the central Great Barrier Reef during the 2022 La Niña
Lara Richards, Steven Siems, Yi Huang, Wenhui Zhao, Michael Manton, Daniel Harrison, Michael Reeder
Scientific Reports | Nature Portfolio | Published : 2024
Abstract
The frequencies of marine heatwaves and thermal coral bleaching events (CBEs) over the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) continue to increase with five mass CBEs reported since 2016. While changes in the local meteorology, such as reduced wind speeds and decreased cloud cover, are known to heat the shallow reef waters, little consideration has been given to the overriding synoptic meteorology. The 2022 CBE, occurring under La Niña conditions, saw ocean temperatures at Davies Reef increase 1.9 ∘C over 19-days and subsequently cool 2.1 ∘C back to seasonal norms over eight days. This event was found to be triggered by repeated Rossby wave breaking disrupting the local trade winds, thus inhibiting the la..
View full abstractRelated Projects (2)
Grants
Awarded by Australian Research Council
Funding Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the Reef Restoration and Adaptation Program. The Reef Restoration and Adaptation Program is funded by the partnership between the Australian Governments Reef Trust and the Great Barrier Reef Foundation. The authors would like to acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the Great Barrier Reef, particularly the Wulgurukaba and Bindal people of the Townsville region near the area of our case study. This research is also supported by the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes (grant no. CE170100023). We acknowledge the National Computational Infrastructure for their provision of computational resources and services. Yi Huang and Steve Siems are further supported by an Australian Research Council Discovery Grant (grant no. DP230100639).